UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 THE 
 
 INDIA QUESTION 
 
 IN 1853. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY T. .PIMNSEP, ESQ., 
 
 I*ATE MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL OF INDIA. 
 
 1745 
 
 LONDON: 
 WM. H. ALLEN & CO., 
 
 1, LEADENHALL STREET. 
 
 1853.
 
 THE 
 
 INDIA QUESTION 
 
 IN 1853. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 < 
 
 <N INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ^ IT is a leading feature of the system of govern- 
 >( ment established for our Indian possessions, that 
 while the administration has been continued in the 
 hands of the great Company by which, or under 
 whose management, they were acquired, there shall 
 > at the end of every twenty years be rendered to 
 ^ Parliament and to the country a full account, as well 
 of their actual condition, as of the manner in which 
 ' all the duties of this important trust have been dis- 
 charged. This vigessennial accountability dates from 
 A.D. 1773, when Warren Hastings and his Council 
 were appointed by a special Act of Parliament to 
 the Government General of India, and when inde- 
 pendent Royal Courts were first established, with 
 the avowed object of affording to the population of 
 that country a means of redress for oppressions suf- 
 fered from the acts of the local Government or of their 
 officers. At the end of every twenty years from that 
 
 B 
 
 358691
 
 2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 date there has been a revision of what was hereto- 
 fore the Charter of the Company, but latterly, since 
 the grant of charters has been dispensed with, may 
 be termed the legislative constitution of the autho- 
 rities by means of which the territories and posses- 
 sions which constitute British India are governed 
 from England and locally administered. At each 
 successive revision, extensive changes have been 
 made, after a searching investigation of every branch 
 and department of Indian affairs. 
 
 The limit of twenty years for the recurrence 
 of these revisions was, in the first instance, acci- 
 dental. The affairs of India were subjected to 
 a severe scrutiny at the close of the government of 
 Warren Hastings, in 1784. Edmund Burke took 
 the lead in that inquiry, and prosecuted it in a spirit 
 of bitterness against the East-India Company and 
 its servants in India, which found vent at last in the 
 famous impeachment and seven years' trial of the 
 ex-Governor-General. The India Bill of Mr. Fox 
 was an earlier fruit of the investigations so instituted. 
 It aimed at no less than a transfer of all administra- 
 tive duties and all patronage and responsibility from 
 the East-India Company to a Board of Crown and 
 Parliamentary officers. But the change thus pro- 
 posed was too violent for the times. It was encoun- 
 tered by a combined opposition of the commercial 
 and middle classes of England, with all of the aris- 
 tocracy who professed conservative principles, and 
 the younger Pitt, offering himself as a leader, Mr. 
 Fox's government of coalesced parties fell before 
 them, and Pitt rose out of the struggle on this ques-
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 tion to an eminence of influence and authority 
 which no minister of this nation, before or since, 
 has ever reached. Several temporary bills were 
 introduced by this minister and by his colleague 
 Dundas, in substitution for the sweeping changes ^ 
 proposed by Fox, and these were at last consolidated 
 into a general regulating Act, in 1793, just twenty 
 years after the Act of 1773 had been passed for the 
 appointment of Warren Hastings and his council 
 to the general government. The establishment of a 
 council of ministerial officers as a Board of Control, 
 to supervise and direct the proceedings of the East- 
 India Company in its relations especially with the 
 governments of India, was the result of this party 
 struggle. The Act of 1793 contains provisions for 
 regulating the constitution and powers of this Board, 
 and for settling and improving the other adminis- 
 trative establishments, provided for India at home 
 and abroad, without altering materially in other 
 respects their condition and privileges. 
 
 In 1796, by an arrangement between the Crown 
 and the East-India Company, the armies of India 
 were placed on the footing on which they now stand ; 
 which was an important supplementary measure to 
 complete the constitution of government so esta- 
 blished ; and thus it remained without change until 
 the completion of twenty years from the date of 
 passing the Consolidated Act of 1793. 
 
 In 1813, after a less searching scrutiny than that 
 which party spirit had instigated on the former 
 occasion, the lease of the East-India Company, if 
 we may be permitted so to call the scheme of trust- 
 
 B2
 
 4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 management thus devised for India, was renewed for 
 a further term. The only material change made on 
 this occasion, was the admission of the merchants of 
 England to a free participation with the East-India 
 Company in the benefits of trade with the presi- 
 dencies of India, and the confinement of the exclu- 
 sive commercial privileges enjoyed by the Company 
 to China. The crisis of the continental war, at 
 that juncture impending, may account for the little 
 interest felt in this revision, which was conducted 
 by a government of highly conservative principles. 
 
 In 1833, when the period recurred for a third 
 revision, the Parliament of England had been re- 
 cently reformed, and the party which professed the 
 principles and cherished the memory of the authors 
 of the India Bill of 1784 were then in power. 
 Extensive changes therefore were expected; but 
 with exception to the abandonment of commercial 
 dealings of all kinds, which was required from the 
 East-India Company as the condition of their being 
 continued in the trust-management of the territory, 
 the result of this revision produced only some expe- 
 rimental efforts to improve the constitution of the 
 Indian Governments and the character of their 
 legislation, and left the Home Authorities, that is, 
 the Court of Directors, the proprietors of East- 
 India Stock, and the Board of Control, very nearly 
 in the same condition as before. 
 
 We are now in the year 1853, and the period 
 has arrived for a fourth revision. Committees were 
 last year appointed in both Houses of Parliament, 
 to make the necessary preliminary investigations,
 
 POLITICAL CONDITION OF INDIA. 5 
 
 and a Bill is expected to be brought forward in the 
 session of this very year to provide prospectively 
 for the management of the extensive empire which 
 the nation has now acquired in India. In order to 
 preserve consistency with former precedents, the 
 Act should be passed to take effect on the first of 
 May, 1854, both here and in India. Making every 
 allowance for the accelerated communication be- 
 tween the two countries now provided by steam, it 
 would be scarcely safe to let the passing of this 
 important measure lie over to be completed in the 
 session of 1854. We presume, therefore, that the 
 Government will feel the necessity of propounding 
 its scheme before Parliament rises ; and in the 
 hope that it will not be without utility to collect 
 into one view the several matters that require to be 
 considered and arranged ; and the suggestions and 
 opinions that have been offered, we shall devote 
 these pages to an impartial examination of the 
 subject, using for the purpose the materials afforded 
 by the press of India and of England, as well as 
 the Reports and Parliamentary Evidence. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CONDITION OF INDIA IN 1833 AND 1853 POLITICAL. 
 
 LET us inquire in the first place what was the 
 condition of India in 1833 contrasted with that now 
 presenting itself, and what were the improvements 
 attempted the experiments in legislation made in
 
 6 POLITICAL CONDITION OF INDIA 
 
 that year, and with what results. Having premised a 
 short review of the status of things at these two 
 periods, it will follow to show what has now to be 
 determined with reference, either to India, or to 
 the governing authorities established to secure the 
 possession of that country for the nation, and to 
 administer it for its honour and advantage. 
 
 The condition of India in 1833-34 and 1853 has 
 to be considered in three points of view : first, po- 
 litically, using the word in the conventional sense 
 applied to it in India, that is, with reference to the 
 relations subsisting between the British nation and 
 its governments on the one hand, and the native 
 states and native populations on the other ; secondly, 
 financially, with reference to the revenue realized, 
 the charges thereupon, and the debts incurred ; 
 thirdly, morally and socially, with reference to the 
 efforts made to provide an efficient and satisfactory 
 government, and to improve or benefit the people 
 under our immediate rule. The subject, as thus 
 divided, is wide, but we shall treat it only in brief 
 abstract, leaving those who would study it in detail 
 to seek the full development of each head in the 
 Parliamentary Papers and other Reports to which we 
 shall have occasion to refer. 
 
 The early growth of the British power in India, 
 and its progress from 1753 to 1773, and from 1773 
 to 1793, belong to history, which has at last done 
 justice to the achievements in these periods of Clive, 
 Hastings, and Cornwallis. Between 1793 and 1813 
 there was a great further stride made in advance, 
 the wars and diplomatic arrangements of Lord
 
 IN 1833 AND 1853. 7 
 
 Wellesley having much extended the territory 
 directly under British dominion, and having placed 
 the native states which survived them, in altogether 
 new relations. This Governor-General conceived 
 the magnificent design of bringing the entire Penin- 
 sula of India, together with northern Hindostan, to 
 the outer range of the Himalaya, into a condition 
 either of absolute subjection or of protected de- 
 pendence. But he was arrested in the prosecution 
 of this grand scheme by the fears of those to whom 
 he was accountable in England, and by the financial 
 difficulties his great exertions superinduced. The 
 completion of his policy was left for the Marquess 
 of Hastings, and belongs to the period between 1813 
 and 1833. 
 
 When this last-named Governor-General retired 
 iii 1823, he left the supremacy of the British power 
 firmly established over the whole of India, from the 
 Sutlej and Himalaya to the sea. The Mahrattas, in 
 the days of Clive and Warren Hastings, had con- 
 tended with the Mahommedans for the sovereignty 
 of India, but were driven back into the Deccan by 
 the disastrous defeat of Paniput. Recovering from 
 that check, they had reappeared in Hindostan, and 
 were, in the days of Lord Wellesley, in a condition 
 to contend there for supremacy with the British 
 nation, but were a second time broken and driven 
 out of that field by the effect of the wars of 1803-5. 
 Still, not crushed by those wars, the combined chiefs 
 of that nation made in 1818-19 a final struggle for 
 independence, and even for ascendancy. The chiefs, 
 however, were, with one exception, separately de-
 
 8 POLITICAL CONDITION OF INDIA 
 
 feated, and brought to accept territory on the express 
 condition of protected dependence. The single ex- 
 ception was Doulut Rao Sindheea, who, by early 
 submission to the terms proposed, escaped the con- 
 sequences of a collision and defeat. He died in 
 1827, and his widow then adopted a boy from a 
 distant collateral branch, during whose minority she 
 governed as regent under British countenance and 
 support. In 1833, the adopted son, at the instiga- 
 tion of his ambitious father-in-law, asserted his right 
 to the sovereignty as heir of Doulut Rao, and by a 
 course of intrigue and violence, in which he was 
 overtly supported at a critical moment by the British 
 Resident at Gwalior, and by the troops officered 
 from the company's army, expelled the Regent- 
 mother, and compelled her to seek refuge in the 
 British territory. Such a revolution could not have 
 occurred at any other court, without our prompt 
 interference to settle it and prevent bloodshed. 
 But the unbroken spirit of the military establish- 
 ments at Gwalior presented materials for future 
 trouble. Elsewhere the Mabratta courts were in 
 the same state of helpless dependence as the courts 
 of Oude and Hyderabad, but the chiefs of that 
 nation had not fallen into the same habits of profli- 
 gate self-indulgence, and reckless indifference to the 
 well or ill-doing of their officers and subjects. 
 
 West of the Sutlej, Runjeet Singh was, in 1833, 
 jealous and distrustful, but friendly to a degree 
 bordering on subservience. Beyond the Punjab 
 no attempt had yet been made to establish perma- 
 nent diplomatic relations, and with Sindh we were
 
 IN 1833 AND 1853. 9 
 
 only commencing the endeavour to cultivate a 
 commercial intercourse. 
 
 Nepal and Ava had received British Residents, 
 the former in 1816, the latter in 1826, and both 
 states were fully sensible of their inferiority in 
 power and resources, but jealous in the extreme of 
 further intimacy, and sedulously cultivating the 
 means of resisting expected encroachments on their 
 independence. Such was the political condition of 
 India in 1833. How does the British power now 
 stand, as the result of twenty years of diplomatic 
 administration since that date ? 
 
 We have suffered in name and credit, as well as 
 in purse, by a premature attempt to reduce Afghan- 
 istan to the condition of a protected state under a 
 friendly prince. From the disastrous consequences 
 of that attempt we had no sooner recovered, than 
 the death of the chief, and a fresh succession at 
 Gwalior, embroiled us with the turbulent military of 
 that state. The collision, however, brought the 
 Sindheea family down to the same level with other 
 Mahratta chiefs, and has added considerably both to 
 our influence and resources. 
 
 The death of Runjeet Singh during our attempt 
 on Afghanistan, and the struggle of factions and of 
 military chiefs in the Punjab which followed, cast 
 the whole power of that state into the hands of the 
 mutinous army ; and, with a large accession of 
 refugees from the discontented and discharged 
 Mahratta establishments, and of deserters from our 
 own armies, a power was organized at Lahore in 
 1845, presumptuous enough to enter upon a war
 
 10 POLITICAL CONDITION OF INDIA 
 
 with us of invasion and of professed expulsion from 
 Hindostan. For this final struggle we were com- 
 pelled to collect larger armies and to put forth a 
 greater display of strength and resources than upon 
 any former occasion. The triumph, however, was 
 commensurate with the exertions made, and the result 
 has left us masters of the entire Punjab, and of the 
 Indus to the sea, with Peshawur as an outpost of 
 attack or defence towards Afghanistan : Sindh had 
 been seized antecedently on the plea of its ruler's 
 doubtful fidelity during the Afghan troubles. 
 
 Thus besides the consolidation of relations with 
 Sindheea, and the occupation of Sattara, and other 
 acquisitions by lapse or conquest within the pale of 
 the supremacy fully recognised and established in 
 1833, we have in 1853 added the entire plain 
 washed by the river Indus and its tributaries to the 
 territory directly administered by British officers. 
 Our frontier now reaches to the mountains west of 
 that river which shut in the lawless half-civilized 
 tribes of Afghanistan. This new territory, be it 
 observed, is co-extensive with any one of the four 
 Presidencies into which the Act of 1833 divided the 
 British possessions in India ; and its annexation is 
 an important circumstance to be borne in mind in 
 framing arrangements for the future. 
 
 Large as is this extension of our dominion, it 
 was no aim of our policy of the period to make 
 the acquisition. The Sikhs were jealous neigh- 
 bours, like the Nepalese and Burmese, and like 
 them cultivated a national spirit and gave a military 
 organization to their population. Instead, however,
 
 IN 1833 AND 1853. 11. 
 
 of giving them security, this very spirit and organi- 
 zation were their ruin. For a revolution giving 
 power to the ignorant and presumptuous, and to 
 men who rose to eminence by pandering to this 
 spirit, and by holding out hopes of conquest and 
 aggrandizement to the army, the collision was 
 forced on, which terminated in reducing the Sikh 
 territory to the condition of a British province. 
 
 The lesson is an important "one, teaching that no 
 prudence or forbearance on our part can give 
 security against similar aggression from any neigh- 
 bouring state which cultivates the military spirit. 
 With such, our diplomacy is confined to the avoid- 
 ance of any legitimate cause of offence. We have 
 no British party to be maintained and supported, 
 but studiously refrain even from offering advice, or 
 from interfering in the intrigues and quarrels which 
 are continually occurring. Yet instead of winning 
 favour by this moderation, it is often construed into 
 fear, and thus invites insult and aggression. Nepal 
 and Ava are, however, the only remaining powers 
 with which we have relations of this kind, and 
 with the latter state we are now embroiled and in 
 actual war. Everywhere else in India our political 
 supremacy is so confirmed, and so generally recog- 
 nised, that it is the business of the Government, and 
 of its Residents and Agents, to endeavour so to 
 direct the counsels and proceedings of the Courts, 
 as shall best prevent confusion and preserve tran- 
 quillity. We talk much of counselling them to 
 study the good of their subjects, and to improve 
 their methods of administration ; but all advice of
 
 12 POLITICAL CONDITION OF INDIA. 
 
 this kind is but words thrown away. The protected 
 Courts despair of achieving real independence by 
 an appeal to force ; but regarding their guaranteed 
 position as a means of governing at will, and of 
 raising the largest possible revenue with the least 
 personal trouble, for purposes of pomp and of self- 
 indulgence, they resist advice, howsoever disin- 
 terested, as an interference with the rights of 
 internal administration reserved by their treaties; 
 and for the defence of these, besides engaging in 
 discreditable intrigues through corrupt agents, they 
 use now litigious means, engaging professional Euro- 
 pean advocates, and enlisting the services of the 
 press, English as well as Indian, which they have 
 discovered to have greater sway with Governments, 
 organized like those provided by the British Legis- 
 lature for India, than any array of bayonets or 
 cannon they could bring into the field. 
 
 There are not wanting in England able and well- 
 meaning men, who argue stoutly for the right of 
 these protected Princes to do what they like with 
 their own ; but statesmen, more wise and foreseeing, 
 take a higher view of the obligations the British 
 nation has come under, by assuming the position of 
 supremacy it occupies. In all ages, and amongst 
 all nations, sovereignty carries with it the duty of 
 acting as guardian and protector of the population. 
 It was declared in a memorable despatch of the secret 
 committee, dated as far back as 1830, that we owed 
 it to the people of India to secure to them always 
 a beneficent Government if through the main- 
 tenance of the native states and their institutions,
 
 FINANCIAL CONDITION OF INDIA. 13 
 
 so much the better ; but under their failure, by such 
 other means as would secure the end with least 
 violence to the habits and the feelings which pre- 
 vail. This is a wise and true principle, which we 
 hope to see recognised, confirmed, and enforced by 
 legislative authority upon the present occasion. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CONDITION OF INDIA IN 1833 AND 1853. FINANCIAL 
 
 DEBT AND REVENUE, THEIR INCREASE. 
 
 HAVING thus explained briefly the political con- 
 dition of India in 1833 an4 1853, pass we now to 
 a view of its Finance. 
 
 When Lord Hastings left India in 1823, the 
 revenue was in a condition to afford a considerable 
 surplus, after paying all charges of the local as well 
 as of the Home Administration. He availed him- 
 self of this surplus to pay offa part of the Indian debt, 
 and to reduce the rate of interest on the remainder 
 from 6 to 5 per cent., and a commencement was 
 made of the further reduction to 4 per cent. In 
 1824-25, the first Burmese war occurred to arrest 
 these financial operations, and the Indian debt was 
 increased in consequence, between that year and 
 1830, from 26,468,475 to 39,918,488, making an 
 increase of thirteen millions and a half, as the result 
 of that rupture, and of the capture of Bhurtpoor, 
 which was achieved in the same period. 
 
 In the period from 1829 to 1833 the economies
 
 14 FINANCIAL CONDITION OF INDIA 
 
 of Lord William Bentinck had nearly restored our 
 Indian finance to its former wholesome condition of 
 surplus, after providing for all Home and Indian 
 charges, and the debt of India was also reduced in 
 1834 to 35,463,483. When the Act of 1833 
 therefore passed, there was every prospect of per- 
 manent financial prosperity giving the power of de- 
 voting revenue to works of necessary improvement. 
 That Act imposed the obligation of withdrawing 
 wholly from commerce, and compelled the remittance 
 of what might thenceforward be required for home 
 expenditure by mercantile bills freely negotiated 
 in the markets of London or of India. The sale 
 of the commercial properties of the East-India 
 Company which ensued, yielded considerable sums, 
 applicable further to reduce debt and otherwise 
 assist the Indian finance, which thus continued to 
 prosper without intermission until the fatal resolu- 
 tion was adopted of restoring Shah Shooja to the 
 throne of Afghanistan. 
 
 The condition of the finance of India for the period 
 from 1834 to 1853 is best illustrated by a statement ; 
 but before introducing one it will be necessary to 
 explain a difference uniformly apparent between 
 the accounts of India made up in rupees, and those 
 made up in pounds sterling, for the purpose of 
 being annually laid before Parliament. It will be 
 necessary further to explain the change made in 
 1835-36 in the coin of account, the Bengal sicca 
 rupee being then banished from the books of the 
 Indian Government, and the Company's rupee, 
 which contains one-sixteenth less of pure silver,
 
 IN 1833 AND 1853. 15 
 
 being established as the coin both of currency and 
 of account for all the Presidencies of India. This 
 coin bears the effigy of the British Sovereign, and 
 the resolution to strike it, and to give it a weight 
 and value capable of substitution for all the various 
 currencies then enjoying the privilege of being a 
 legal tender, was adopted at the time of giving effect 
 to the Act of 1833. The project for this change 
 was one of the first measures submitted to the 
 Government of India when it was legally constituted 
 under the provisions of the Act of Parliament upon 
 the return of Lord William Bentinck to Calcutta 
 from Ootakamund towards the close of the year 1834. 
 The Company's rupee weighs 180 grains, of which 
 165 are pure silver and 15 alloy. The florin of two 
 shillings weighs 174^ grains and contains 161 '4 of pure 
 silver, a difference too small to be perceptible or to 
 bear any assigned value ; but the English coin derives 
 its local value in exchange, not from the quantity of 
 pure silver it contains, but from its fractional rela- 
 tion to the pound sterling or gold sovereign, which 
 is the basis of our monetary system. Silver coin 
 in England is subject to seigniorage duty of four 
 shillings in the pound Troy, or nearly 6 per cent., and 
 is a legal tender only for forty shillings, whereas our 
 Indian rupee, which is coined for the public at a 
 charge of 2 per cent., is there the exclusive legal 
 tender for any amount. The recent redundancy 
 and fall in the price of gold has brought our Indian 
 rupee to more than equality with the florin of two 
 shillings in exchanges, and it is not likely again to 
 fall ; we shall therefore treat it as the equivalent of
 
 16 FINANCIAL CONDITION OF INDIA 
 
 two shillings. In the returns laid before Parliament, 
 the value is assigned to it of 1*. lO^c?. 
 
 With respect to the differences of account, it is 
 the custom in India to enter the charges of collec- 
 tion as an administrative disbursement, and to take 
 credit as revenue for the gross sums realized ; 
 whereas, in the accounts of England, the charges of 
 collection are ordinarily first deducted, and the net 
 amount only is credited to revenue. This different 
 method of exhibiting the accounts tells especially 
 upon the realizations under the two heads of Salt 
 and Opium, because the large revenue obtained from 
 both is a difference in the price at which these 
 articles are purchased and received into store on 
 the one hand, and that, on the other, at which they 
 are again sold or given out. The outlay for pur- 
 chase is exhibited as a charge in India, whereas it 
 is in England first deducted, and the remainder only 
 credited to revenue. In order to meet the wishes 
 and to suit the convenience of readers accustomed 
 to either form of account, we give in the following 
 Statement the Indian as well as the English totals, 
 the items of both being furnished by the Report 
 published at the close of last year by the Com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons.
 
 IN 1833 AND 1853. 
 
 11 
 
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 uj Of oT O * 1C CO" 1(5 rfT 00* T}H~ U3 rf <O CO gq O 
 
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 CO iff O t3 rC 00 OO Oi O C? O --^ of of of of 
 
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 oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
 
 18 FINANCIAL CONDITION OF INDIA 
 
 Materials are not yet forthcoming for continuing 
 this statement for 1850-51 and 1851-52. The 
 general result shows, that during the period under 
 review, the territories in the trust management of 
 the East India Company have been so augmented 
 or otherwise improved as to yield at present a gross 
 revenue of twenty-eight crores of rupees or as many 
 million sterling, which is seven crore"s of rupees or 
 seven millions sterling of revenue more than they 
 yielded in the first year of the term ; but that the 
 management entails at the same time an equal 
 augmentation of charge; and the debt, the interest 
 of which is included in the charges of management, 
 has also increased in the period by thirteen, or, 
 allowing for the reduction by so applying the com- 
 mercial assets, by sixteen millions sterling. 
 
 Thus, considered in a financial point of view, we 
 have a growth of the concern in magnitude of more 
 than one-third in twenty years. If we look back 
 to 1813 we find the revenues and charges, and the 
 principal of the debt likewise, more than doubled in 
 the course of the forty years ; on the other hand, if 
 tried by the test of net income, that is, of surplus 
 revenue, after discharging demands of all kinds, 
 Indian and home, including outlays for improve- 
 ments as well as for wars and other contingencies, 
 it would not seem that we are nearer to that point 
 or better off in any respect, upon the balance of 
 receipts and charges, than we were either in 1833 
 or in 1813. But surplus income for tribute is no 
 test either of progress or of prosperity. England 
 has never in the present century declared tribute to
 
 IN 1833 AND 1853. 19 
 
 be the aim of her Indian policy, and if there were 
 now to be exhibited the assurance of a permanent 
 surplus revenue capable of such application, there is 
 not a statesman or public man in the United King- 
 dom who would venture to claim it as a fair asset 
 of the Imperial Budget. There would be but one 
 voice as to the appropriation of any such surplus. 
 First, discharge or reduce the Indian debt; secondly, 
 prosecute works of improvement, administrative, 
 social or moral, for the benefit of the country 
 governed ; thirdly, after fulfilling satisfactorily these 
 duties of the governing authority, remit to the 
 people every rupee of taxation that can be spared 
 beyond. 
 
 Premising, then, that the end and aim of the 
 policy by which the East India Company are to be 
 guided in their trust management of India is, that 
 they are to administer for the good of India, and 
 not for the profit of England, the magnitude of the 
 concern, and its rapid growth and extension, are 
 fair sources of pride to the governing country, and 
 a primd facie evidence of success and prosperity. 
 The people governed have nowhere cast us off, but 
 other populations have accepted and fallen under 
 the same rule ; and the old sources of revenue, in- 
 stead of failing, have become more productive. 
 
 Let us, however, look a little into the sources of 
 these increases, both of revenue and of charge. In 
 the first years of the period from 1833 to 1850, 
 nothing was added to either head. On the other 
 hand, there was a large reduction made of the total 
 debt to the extent of upwards of five millions 
 
 c2
 
 20 FINANCIAL CONDITION OF INDIA 
 
 sterling, chiefly through the application to this pur- 
 pose of the sums realised from the sale of the com- 
 mercial assets of the East India Company but not 
 entirely from this cause, for the economies of Lord 
 William Bentinck and of Sir Charles Metcalfe 
 were not without influence also in producing that 
 result. 
 
 We find the armies of India standing in the first 
 three years of the statement at the low figure of 
 186,000 men. The unfortunate Afghan war then 
 added 80,000 men to these armies and seven mil- 
 lions at least to the debt, without yielding any 
 territory or addition of any kind to our resources, 
 being the first and only war in which we were ever 
 engaged in India which had such a termination. 
 
 The administration of Lord Ellenborough added 
 Sindh, and some territories of Sindheea, and so pro- 
 duced an increase of more than a million sterling, 
 both to revenue and to charge. But the warlike 
 attitude assumed against the Afghans could in no 
 respect be relaxed, and there was no return to the 
 peace establishments of the years 1834-37, and no 
 attempt made to seek the restoration of finance by 
 the old process of retrenchment and military reduc- 
 tion. The condition of the Punjab rendered this 
 impossible, and produced the final struggle from 
 which the great acquisitions of the period, since the 
 last Charter Act, have resulted, the merit and glory 
 of which have to be divided between Lord Hardinge 
 and the Marquess Dalhousie. The territory thus 
 added yields a gross land revenue which is expected, 
 when properly settled, to reach two millions ster-
 
 IN 1833 AND 1853. 21 
 
 ling. It already amounts to a crore and a half of 
 rupees. 
 
 The more recent annexation of Sattara appears, 
 through some strange management of the Bombay 
 government, to have added more charge than it has 
 yet yielded of revenue. But taking the entire of 
 the new territorial acquisitions since 1834, their 
 gross revenue cannot be set down at so much as 
 one- half of the gross increase exhibited in the above 
 statement. The remainder has arisen from lapses 
 and resumptions enforced in the old territory of the 
 East India Company, or from the improvement of 
 existing sources of revenue, and the productive yield 
 of fresh or substituted taxation. 
 
 In Appendix No. 1, attached to the Report of 
 the House of Commons' Committee, is a compara- 
 tive statement for the years 1834-35 and 1849-50, 
 which enables us to explain briefly the principal 
 sources of these improvements. The statement, 
 though given in pounds sterling, exhibits the gross 
 realization, as exhibited in Company's rupees in the 
 Indian accounts, together with the charges of collec- 
 tion, &c. which are deducted in making up the 
 accounts annually laid before Parliament, as above 
 explained. We find in this statement the total of 
 the gross land revenue of India set down at 
 13,043,462 in 1834-35, and in 1849-50 increased 
 to 16,915,035, including the million and a half 
 or two millions sterling obtained from recent new 
 acquisitions. More than half a million is claimed 
 as the result of resumptions and lapses in the two 
 divisions of the Bengal presidency, and as much
 
 22 -. FINANCIAL CONDITION OF INDIA 
 
 more from greater regularity in the annual realisa- 
 tion ffftm lands under settlement. But it must not 
 be assumed- that any part of this increase is ascrib- 
 able to an enhancement of rents upon the indivi- 
 duals and e'states which contributed the revenue of 
 
 V Jff.' 
 
 1834-35, excepting in so far as they were subject to 
 it either ty. the terms of their engagement, or from 
 liability to ' the processes applicable to unsettled 
 lands. Th officers of account remark, that in old 
 settled districts the land revenue has a tendency to 
 diminish rather than to increase, and this notwith- 
 standing that realisation by sale is, in Bengal, the 
 ordinary process for recovery in case of default, and 
 the law for this has been made more stringent than 
 in the Dearly years of the period. The ryotwar set- 
 tlement of the Madras presidency, which was intro- 
 duced by Sir ^Thomas Munro, on the ground of its 
 affording greater security to the cultivating proprie- 
 tors, has especially failed, either as a source of im- 
 proved revenue to the Government, or a benefit to 
 the classes for whom it was devised. There is a 
 discussion of this question in the book recently 
 published by Mr. George Campbell, a revenue officer 
 of the Agra division of the Bengal presidency, well 
 competent by study and experience to form a sound 
 opinion. His observations on the subject are de- 
 serving of attention, nor do we see how his conclu- 
 sions against the system are to be resisted. We 
 speak of it here, however, as a measure of finance 
 only. Its effect on the social condition and well- 
 being of the population is a different branch of the 
 question.
 
 IN 1833 AND 1853. 23 
 
 The land revenue system of Bombay is also yet 
 unsettled ; but important as the subject is, consi- 
 dering that our settlements are the basis of property 
 in land, these are not questions for British legisla- 
 tion. The determination of all matters of local 
 administration, whether of revenue, of police, or 
 of justice, must be left to the local governments 
 and to the legislature that may be provided for 
 India. Interference with them, even for limitation 
 of the powers they have exercised in these depart- 
 ments, can only be injurious. To this part of the 
 subject, however, we shall have occasion to advert 
 more fully hereafter. 
 
 While the land revenue has thus been augmented 
 from thirteen millions sterling to nearly seventeen 
 millions, the charges incident to the collection of 
 this impost have increased since 1834-35 from 
 2,987,103 to 4,284,888, so that the net amount 
 realised and credited to the head in the Parlia- 
 mentary accounts stands, for the two years, at 
 10,058,359 and 12,630,147 respectively, showing 
 an increase of only two millions and a half from 
 this source. The causes of the increase in the ratio 
 of the charges belong also to the head of social 
 and moral changes incident to the course of British 
 administration in the period under review, and will 
 there be noticed. 
 
 The Customs' Revenue exhibits no improvement, 
 but the contrary. The net receipts at all the Pre- 
 sidencies of India under this head were, in 1834-35, 
 1,317,862, and in 1849-50, only 1,190,135. 
 This is accounted for by the abolition of Inland
 
 24 FINANCIAL CONDITION OF INDIA 
 
 Customs, and by the equalisation of duties on sea- 
 borne commerce to all foreigners ; consequently, on 
 the adoption in India of the principles of free 
 trade. The duties on the manufactured goods of 
 Europe imported into India were, in 1834-5, at the 
 low rate of 2J per cent, if wholly British ; but 
 were doubled to the foreigner, first, for the place of 
 production, and again for the bottom of import. 
 The produce of India was subject to a similar duty 
 upon export, similarly doubled and quadrupled. 
 When the Transit or Inland Duties were abolished, 
 the rate of Sea Customs' duty was increased first to 
 3^ per cent, and afterwards to 5 per cent. ; but 
 this increase has not covered the loss suffered 
 through the change of system. Staple articles of 
 raw produce wanted for the manufactures of Eng- 
 land, or entering into competition with tropical 
 goods of other countries, have been exempted alto- 
 gether from export duty, which has occasioned a 
 further loss of revenue. It appears strange that so 
 small a proportion of the general revenue of India 
 should be levied in this form, when we consider the 
 importance and the magnitude of her commerce ; 
 but this is a consequence of being the dependency 
 of a commercial nation professing free-trade prin- 
 ciples, and desirous by all means to extend its own 
 dealings. A tax of 10 per cent, on the manu- 
 factures of England imported into India, such as is 
 levied on those of India brought to England, would 
 create an outcry at Manchester that no government 
 could stand against. 
 
 The next material head of receipt is the Salt
 
 IN 1833 AND 1853. 25 
 
 revenue. The total amount realised in the three 
 Presidencies of India in 1834-35, from imposts on 
 this necessary of consumption was 2,080,594 ; de- 
 ducting the outlay for purchases and for charges 
 (766,515), the net receipt in that year was 
 1,314,079. In 1849-50, this resource yielded 
 gross 2,419,107, from which deducting charges 
 reduced to 393,362, the net realisation from salt 
 amounted to 2,025,745, showing an improvement 
 of more than 50 per cent. This has been owing to 
 new imposts levied at Bombay and in the North- 
 Western Provinces of Bengal, in the latter of 
 which the rate of duty has been equalised with that 
 of Bengal, and in the former with that of Madras. 
 The encouragement of sea import at a rate of duty 
 professing to be equal to the profit realised on the 
 Bengal manufactured salt, has destroyed, or at least 
 much reduced, the local production in that part of 
 our Indian territory, to the injury of those to whom 
 it gave subsistence. This change of system, how- 
 ever, has told on the aggregate of charges, and 
 shows itself also in a diminished revenue in Bengal 
 proper. But the duty has been lowered to the 
 consumer, and there has resulted an augmentation 
 of the supply furnished for consumption through 
 both sources. The Bengal duty is now Rs. 2| per 
 maund of eighty pounds, instead of 3^, as it was in 
 1834. 
 
 But the greatest improvement of the existing 
 sources of revenue is apparent in the contrast of the 
 opium receipts of 1834-35 and 1849-50. In the 
 former year the gross realisation was 1,256,549, from
 
 26 FINANCIAL CONDITION OF INDIA. 
 
 which, deducting the cost of the opium and charges, 
 528,032, the net profit was only 728,517. In 
 1849-50, the gross receipt was 4,216,176, the cost 
 and charges 906,539, yielding a net revenue of 
 3,309,637. This is accidental and not to be 
 depended upon as permanent, the revenue being 
 always fluctuating and dependent on the facilities 
 for disposing of the opium in China. The net receipt 
 of the previous year was only two millions and a 
 half. But the total quantity of opium provided from 
 both sides of India is now quadrupled at least, as 
 compared with the provision of 1834-35, which 
 necessarily ensures a larger receipt into the treasury 
 from the larger supply exported. The increased 
 provision is shown in the charges brought to account 
 in Bengal, but the impost in Bombay, being levied 
 in the form of a pass duty per chest, there is no dif- 
 ference of charge apparent there. 
 
 The stamp duties of India yielded, in 1834-35, a 
 net revenue of only 322,261, which, in 1849-50, 
 was increased to 428,829. More than the half of 
 this is a tax on exhibits, on petitions, on processes, 
 and on witnesses, and thus is a tax on law proceed- 
 ings ; the remainder is a tax on deeds and commer- 
 cial papers ; but the revenue and the principles on 
 which it is levied are the most unsettled and ques- 
 tionable of all the assets of the public income. It is 
 wholly of European origin, nothing of the kind 
 having existed under any native government. 
 
 The other heads of receipt are small, having no 
 bearing on the finance of the country considered in 
 the gross, as we are now doing. The general result
 
 FINANCIAL REVIEW CONTINUED. 27 
 
 shows an improvement of the revenue in the com- 
 parison of 1849-50 With 1834-35, to the extent of 
 seven millions sterling, but two and a half millions 
 sterling of this must be set down to opium, and is 
 therefore fluctuating and precarious ; half a million 
 and more is realised from an improved salt revenue, 
 and of the three millions obtained from an improved 
 land revenue, about two are realised from new 
 acquisitions, and the remainder from lapses and 
 resumptions. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FINANCIAL REVIEW CONTINUED. CHARGES, THEIR 
 
 INCREASE. 
 
 WHEN we look at the charges of administration 
 separately from those incident to the collection of 
 the revenue realised, we find the increase, which 
 amounts to near six millions sterling, thus distri- 
 buted ; the military charges, separately from those of 
 war (viz. from the extra batta to troops and other 
 charges of that kind, which appear under a separate 
 head), stood in 1834-35, at 6,904,263, and were 
 reduced in the two following years to 6,687,384 
 and 6,657,272; but, in 1849-50, they stand at 
 the high figure of 9,406,060, making a difference 
 of two millions and a half; civil and political charges, 
 called charges general in the Indian accounts, have 
 been augmented from 1,369,215 to 2,054,361, a 
 difference of 600,000 ; judicial and police charges,
 
 28 FINANCIAL REVIEW CONTINUED: 
 
 from 1,533,860 to 1 ,914,334, or nearly 400,000; 
 marine charges, through a larger employment of war- 
 steamers, from 191,557 to 253,363, and estimated 
 for 1850-51, 338,411, or say about 100,000. 
 Interest on the debt from 1,774,153, in 1834-35, 
 which was reduced, in 1836-37 to 1,345,619, to 
 2,050,935, in 1849-50, giving an increase of 
 700,000. A like amount appears in the accounts 
 of 1849-50, for war charges not incurred in 1834-35. 
 The increase in territorial payments in England is 
 from 1,940,084 to 2,372,837, and of stores sent 
 to India from 234,341 to 378,100, making toge- 
 ther a difference of 576,312.- 
 
 Military increase ... 2,500,000 
 
 Civil and political ... 600,000 
 
 Judicial and police ... 400,000 
 
 Marine (steamers) ... 100,000 
 
 Interest on debt ... 700,000 
 
 War charges 700,000 
 
 Home charges 576,312 
 
 5,576,312 
 
 We have thus more than five millions and a half of 
 increased charge accounted for, separately from the 
 necessarily increased charge of collecting the larger 
 revenue. 
 
 This analysis, which may be further followed out 
 in detail, by any one who desires it, by reference to 
 the statements in Appendix No. 1 of the Commons 
 Committee's Report, will suffice for the general 
 view which it is our present purpose to present.
 
 CHARGES, THEIR INCREASE. 29 
 
 The augmentation of military charges is 
 2,500,000, of civil and judicial charges in the en- 
 larged territory now administered one million 
 sterling. 
 
 It is well known to be a characteristic of the 
 East India Company's administration, that all 
 offices of high civil trust and responsibility, and all 
 commissions in the armies of India shall be held by 
 a class of servants sent to India in early youth and 
 bound by oath, and likewise by covenant, to serve 
 the Company faithfully and exclusively. The 
 covenant is a remnant of the old commercial 
 character of the governing body, and is signed by 
 every writer and cadet, and a fresh one is required 
 from every member of council appointed by the 
 Court of Directors ; but since the duties of every 
 class of servants have been defined, and their re- 
 sponsibilities regulated by Acts of Parliament, this 
 surely is a superfluous form that might with ad- 
 vantage be dispensed with. Instead of facilitating 
 legal proceedings in case of breach of trust or 
 malversation, its effect has been to screen offenders, 
 for they must be sued under their covenants and 
 not under the general law of liability. 
 
 It is the appointment of these servants, however, 
 that constitutes the patronage of the Court of Di- 
 rectors, so valued and esteemed. The impression, 
 therefore, that is likely to be taken up from a first 
 view of the large increase of civil and military 
 charge is, that this patronage must have been pro- 
 portionately augmented. But this is far from 
 having been the case.
 
 30 
 
 FINANCIAL REVIEW CONTINUED I 
 
 Appendix No. 6 of the Commons' Committee's 
 Report gives a statement of the troops of every 
 description serving and paid in India in every year 
 from 1835 to 1851. The Europeans (Queen's and 
 Company's included), amounted numerically in 
 1835 to 30,822 men, and the natives to 152,938. 
 In 1851, of the former class there were serving in 
 India 49,408 men, and of the latter 240,121 men ; 
 making an increase to the Europeans of 18,586 
 men, and of native soldiers 87,183 men. This is 
 equal to twenty new regiments of Europeans, and 
 one hundred of natives of the ordinary strength. 
 The real increase of regimented corps has been of 
 the royal army, one regiment of dragoons, and two 
 of infantry. Of the Company's army; to the foot 
 artillery, two battalions of Europeans and two of 
 natives ; of European infantry, three regiments, one 
 to each presidency ; and of native infantry, three at 
 Bombay, with a small increase to the corps of 
 engineers at each presidency. 
 
 The number of officers of the Company's army, on 
 the effective list on the two dates 1835 and 1850, 
 was as follows : 
 
 
 Bengal. 
 
 Madras. 
 
 Bombay. 
 
 Total. 
 
 1835. 
 
 1850. 
 
 1835. 
 
 1850. 
 
 1835. 
 
 1850. 
 
 1835. 
 
 1850. 
 
 Colonels 
 Lt. Colonels 
 Majors 
 Captains 
 Subalterns 
 
 99 
 100 
 99 
 496 
 1,188 
 
 103 
 104 
 103 
 606 
 1,530 
 
 67 
 67 
 67 
 350 
 840 
 
 72 
 73 
 72 
 430 
 1,071 
 
 37 
 37 
 37 
 185 
 444 
 
 41 
 43 
 43 
 
 252 
 606 
 
 203 
 204 
 203 
 1,031 
 2,472 
 
 216 
 220 
 218 
 1,288 
 3,207 
 
 1,983 
 
 2,446 
 
 1,395 
 
 1,718 
 
 740 1 985 
 
 4,117 
 
 5,149
 
 CHARGES, THEIR INCREASE. 31 
 
 Thus, for the command of an army augmented 
 by 100,000 men, the additional officers of the cove- 
 nanted class, the patronage of whose appointments 
 lies with the Court of Directors, has only been 1,000 ; 
 the numerical ratio, corresponding with the augmen- 
 tation of men, would have required an increase 
 exceeding 2,000 officers of this description. Upon 
 the assumption, therefore, that the enlarged terri- 
 tory and new circumstances of India require perma- 
 nently this augmented army, the Court of Directors, 
 instead of being chargeable with having made the 
 necessity for military increase subserve to purposes 
 of their private patronage, are open to the opposite 
 imputation of having greatly stinted the supply of 
 officers required for the increased duties of com- 
 mand. 
 
 Every effective officer has his place in some 
 regiment or corps. There are none on half-pay or 
 unattached, available upon any exigency, as in 
 England. The number, therefore, depends on the 
 number of regiments and corps authorised for each 
 presidency and their constitution. Additional 
 captains and lieutenants have been sanctioned to 
 existing corps, but no new native regiments in 
 Bengal or Madras since the last Burmese war 
 under the government of Lord Amherst. Three 
 native regiments were sanctioned for Bombay upon 
 the annexation of Sindh ; but the increase to the 
 number of effective men arises principally from the 
 levy by the Indian Governments of local corps and 
 irregular regiments of horse and foot officered from 
 the regiments of the regular army. It is to be
 
 32 FINANCIAL REVIEW CONTINUED : 
 
 observed that the number of men thus stated in 
 the return made to the Commons' Committee does 
 not include the Nizam's troops and those of other 
 native states and princes, for which officers are 
 similarly supplied from that army. It only includes 
 the soldiers actually paid by the East India Company. 
 Adding the contingents,* the effective troops at the 
 disposal of the supreme government of India will 
 be understated at 320,000 men, and the complaint 
 is universal that subject as the regular army is to 
 calls for the service of its officers on staff and civil 
 duties, as well asfor the command and training of these 
 extra, irregular, and contingent corps, the number 
 of covenanted and commissioned military servants 
 furnished at present by the Court of Directors, is 
 quite insufficient for the duties they have to perform. 
 
 In like manner the increased charge of one 
 million sterling for civil, political, and judicial 
 administration, arises from no augmentation of 
 servants of the covenanted class. With territory 
 augmented to the extent of an entire presidency, 
 the number and cost of servants of this description 
 ought each to have been increased by at least one- 
 fourth. But the number has, during the entire 
 period from 1833 to 1849 been nearly stationary, 
 and the cost has been diminished by a quarter of a 
 million sterling. 
 
 The following statement shows the condition of 
 
 * The Nizam's reformed troops, and those maintained by other 
 native states, are called contingents, because they have been 
 substituted for troops that the native states were bound to keep 
 up and furnish in aid of the subsidiary forces.
 
 CHARGES, THEIR INCREASE. 
 
 33 
 
 the covenanted civil establishment of India at four 
 periods, for which it was taken, for purposes uncon- 
 nected with the present Parliamentary investigation, 
 but which being for intervals of ten years, and 
 having been taken without any selection for any party 
 or interested purpose, affords results indicative of the 
 degree in which this class has been favoured, or the 
 contrary : 
 
 
 Bengal. 
 
 Madras. 
 
 Bombay. 
 
 
 No. of 
 
 Salaries 
 
 No. of 
 
 Salaries 
 
 No. of 
 
 Salaries 
 
 
 covenanted 
 
 and 
 
 covenanted 
 
 and 
 
 covenanted 
 
 and 
 
 
 Servants. 
 
 Allowances. 
 
 Servants. 
 
 Allowances. 
 
 Servants. 
 
 Allowances. 
 
 1827 
 
 348 
 
 Rs. 
 
 1,00,62,826 
 
 141 
 
 Rs. 
 
 30,75,333 
 
 103 
 
 Rs. 
 
 18,12,877 
 
 1837 
 
 403 
 
 89,38,990 
 
 170 
 
 32,27,633 
 
 101 
 
 18,17,177 
 
 1847 
 
 326 
 
 77,09,933 
 
 141 
 
 27,01,535 
 
 92 
 
 18,58,366 
 
 1849 
 
 394 
 
 77,19,386 
 
 143 
 
 26,55,465 
 
 93 
 
 18,24,664 
 
 This return is exclusive of the governors and 
 members of council, and of the civilians still under 
 tuition in the colleges. 
 
 Such being the condition of the covenanted services 
 at these periods respectively, it is evident that what- 
 ever increase of charge has been occasioned by an 
 extension of the administrative establishments enter- 
 tained in India for our present larger territories, the 
 benefit has not fallen upon the covenanted class, nor 
 have the East-India Directors felt it in their patronage. 
 A larger employment of the natives of India in our 
 armies and for the purposes of civil government is 
 the sole result of this augmentation, and the expen- 
 diture has fallen amongst them, and not amongst 
 Europeans. Whether the change has conduced to 
 
 D
 
 34 FINANCIAL REVIEW CONTINUED. 
 
 improvement, or the contrary, belongs to another 
 branch of our inquiry. 
 
 The Indian debt, bearing interest, which was 
 reduced in the early period under review to thirty 
 millions sterling, stood, in April 1851, at upwards of 
 forty-six millions. The difference, mostly raised at 
 5 per cent., accounts for the addition of 700,000 
 to the annual charge for interest. The other differ- 
 ences are not of sufficient moment to be noticed as 
 elements of our financial condition at the two periods, 
 1835 and 1850 respectively. The general result 
 explained by this brief reference to the principal 
 heads of account must satisfy any one that there is 
 nothing in the financial state of India to call for the 
 interference of the Imperial Legislature. If the 
 debt has augmented, the cause has been apparent 
 in the wars in which the Indian Government has 
 been engaged. The burthen of that debt is not 
 disproportionate to the resources on which it has 
 been laid, and there is no reason whatever to despair 
 of the restoration of the Finance of India to the 
 prosperous condition in which it stood in the early 
 years of the period under review, when there was a 
 surplus applicable to works of local improvement, 
 or to the reduction of the debt. We shall assuredly 
 see this again, whenever India shall be restored to a 
 condition of confirmed and permanent peace. Whe- 
 ther it will be wise, then, to discharge or much to 
 reduce the debt, will be a fair and open question. 
 The total amount, at present, is less than the aggre- 
 gate of two years' gross revenue, and the charge for 
 its interest is less than one-tenth of the total income,
 
 SOCIAL AND MORAL CONDITION OF INDIA. 35 
 
 which, compared with an} 7 state of Europe, cannot 
 be considered as burthensome or inconvenient ; and 
 this latter charge is always susceptible of reduction 
 as the Government acquires stability and the country 
 increases in wealth and prosperity. The value of a 
 debt, in attaching influential classes to the Govern- 
 ment, is now fully recognised : and it is remarked 
 with satisfaction, that the proportion of natives of 
 India who are holders of the stock of recent loans, is 
 much larger than it used to be ; which shows that 
 the moneyed men of India now fully appreciate the 
 value of these securities as an investment for per- 
 manent and assured income ; and this disposition it 
 is very desirable further to encourage. 
 
 Any future surplus revenue may therefore be ap- 
 plied with much more advantage to works of local 
 improvement, or to the alleviation of the most ob- 
 jectionable of existing imposts, than to the payment 
 of debt : and the opinion of the Imperial Legisla- 
 ture may well be expressed in favour of such a 
 preference. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SOCIAL AND MORAL CONDITION OF INDIA IN 1833 
 AND 1853. LAND REVENUE ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 THE social and moral condition of India at the 
 present time, as compared with 1833-34, is a wide 
 subject, well deserving of investigation. 
 
 The Committee of the Lower House of Parlia- 
 ment has called for, and printed, detached state- 
 
 D 2
 
 36 SOCIAL AND MORAL CONDITION 
 
 ments of the present administrative establishments 
 in India, and of the work performed by them. The 
 condition of the police of the territory directly 
 administered by British officers, the number of 
 ascertained crimes, the proportion of criminals ap- 
 prehended and brought to punishment, are matters 
 commonly reported to the Court of Directors in 
 full detail, and the despatches of the Court remark- 
 ing upon the results exhibited in these returns are 
 readily accessible, and will, of course, be subjected 
 to the examination of the committees. So likewise 
 the administration of civil justice, the number of 
 causes instituted, of decrees passed, and the propor- 
 tion of these which have been confirmed or reversed 
 upon appeal. Every matter of this description which 
 is capable of being exhibited in tabulated returns, 
 will be so submitted and published in the reports of 
 these parliamentary committees. But they give a 
 very imperfect and superficial view of the condition 
 of the country governed and of its population. 
 They tell nothing of the feelings of the people, of 
 the effect of these judicial decisions upon their 
 habits and institutions, of their contentment or 
 otherwise with the system established and its 
 administration, nor even of the fact whether the 
 people governed are prosperous and happy, or the 
 contrary. Of one thing, however, they are an 
 undeniable evidence ; and that is, of the complete- 
 ness of the links in the administrative chain, of the 
 state of discipline maintained, and of the checks by 
 which the functionaries of each grade are kept in 
 work; and likewise of the fact, that there are in
 
 OF INDIA IN 1833 AND 1853. 37 
 
 India not only no sinecure situations without duties 
 to perform, but none without such duties as are 
 reported, and pass periodically under the review of 
 their superiors, and even of the highest authority. 
 
 Perhaps too much pains and time and labour are 
 bestowed upon these universal returns. It is the 
 boast of the India-House that, let information be 
 asked upon the most minute or the most compre- 
 hensive subject, the means of furnishing what is 
 required from the materials received, and on record, 
 are always forthcoming, without waiting for a re- 
 ference to the local authorities. The same thing 
 cannot be said of any other dependency of the 
 Crown of England, nor of the system of manage- 
 ment adopted for its out-possessions by any other 
 nation of the world. When Marshal Soult paid 
 his memorable visit to this country about fifteen 
 years ago, and was taken to the East India-House 
 as one of the remarkable objects of curiosity to a 
 foreigner, his first request was to see the records, 
 and after a sufficient examination to enable him to 
 ascertain their completeness and the facilities they 
 presented for prompt reference, he manifested his 
 admiration by declaring not only that he had seen 
 nothing of the kind in the archives of any other 
 state with most of which he was familiar, but 
 had not before conceived the possibility of creating 
 anything so perfect. 
 
 Assuming, however, that the administrative links, 
 and the check of returns and of record are as com- 
 plete as it is possible to make them, we have in the 
 petitions presented to Parliament from each Presi- 
 
 358691
 
 38 SOCIAL AND MORAL CONDITION 
 
 dency, and in the tone of most Native, and of many 
 European publications, abundant indication that 
 locally our administrative system has not given 
 satisfaction. The revenue management, the police, 
 and the administration of civil and criminal justice, 
 are all declared to be manifestly the opponents of 
 the East-India Company say shamefully defective ; 
 and a few words will be necessary to show how far 
 this imputation is well deserved, or the contrary. 
 
 The complaints against our revenue system have 
 already been in part alluded to. But we do not 
 find that the land revenue settlement of the North- 
 Western Provinces, or Agra division of Bengal, 
 which is the great revenue measure of the past 
 twenty years, falls at all in the category of griev- 
 ances. In that settlement, for the first time in 
 the Bengal Presidency, the area subjected to re- 
 venue demand was scientifically surveyed and 
 mapped village by village, and the revenue assessed 
 upon the lot, after the subordinate rights and 
 interests, and the share of each cultivator's contribu- 
 tion, had been thoroughly ascertained and recorded. 
 The settlement has been made with one responsible 
 head, answerable to Government for the revenue 
 of each village, but bound to respect and maintain 
 the rights of fellow-proprietors, and of all pos- 
 sessors of interests thus recorded. The leases 
 were originally granted for twenty years, but with 
 the sanction of the Home authorities they have 
 been extended to thirty. The revenue demand 
 may be enforced by sale of the tenure, that is to 
 say, of the entire village, as so settled and assessed,
 
 OF INDIA IN 1853 AND 1853. 39 
 
 in extreme cases ; but the power of the associated 
 tenantry to interfere and prevent this, and the 
 system of village and pergunna account, main- 
 tained to facilitate the tracing of the cause of 
 default, are relied upon as securities against the 
 necessity of resorting to the harsh process of sale 
 for arrears : and hitherto, where this settlement 
 exists, it has been the exceptional, while, in the 
 permanently settled districts of Bengal, it is the 
 ordinary and exclusive means of securing the punc- 
 tual realization of the Government clues. 
 
 Great complaint is made against the Madras 
 Ryot-war system, which places the Government in 
 direct relation with each cultivating tenant, and 
 leaves the amount of his annual payment subject 
 to a native officer's loose estimate of the produc- 
 tiveness of his crops, and annual recommendations 
 of remission. The system of Bombay, which is an 
 attempt to combine the Ryot-war with the village 
 settlement, is described as unsuccessful so far as it 
 has yet gone. But a survey and an assessment 
 now in progress in the southern districts of that 
 Presidency, are described as of better hope. The 
 fault hitherto has been that the surveyor has fixed 
 in the first instance, the rights of claimants to the 
 land, and its revenue capability likewise, which has 
 left too much to this one class of officers, and has 
 produced great irregularity and confusion. 
 
 In Bengal Proper the perpetual settlement of 
 Lord Cornwallis has lost much of the prestige of 
 wisdom which for half a century attached to it. 
 In the past twenty years an attempt has been made
 
 40 SOCIAL AND MORAL CONDITION 
 
 to survey and define the lands upon which it was 
 laid, and to bring under assessment what then 
 escaped. The attempt, however, has only been 
 partially successful, and is described and often re- 
 ferred to, as one of the grievances to which the 
 population has been subjected. Thus the Agra 
 settlements stand out as the great and only success- 
 ful instance of land revenue administration. Every- 
 where else our management of this department is 
 described as either still a doubtful experiment, or 
 an admitted failure. But although this settlement 
 enjoys at present the reputation of being as nearly 
 perfect as the circumstances under which it was made 
 admitted, we must recollect that the permanent 
 settlement of Lord Cornwallis was long held up as 
 a measure of equally perfect wisdom, and the test 
 of time and of experience may bring to light defects 
 and failings which escape now the ingenuity even of 
 prejudiced investigators. 
 
 The complaint against the Land Revenue System 
 of India, made so confidently by the Manchester 
 Association, viz. that, so long as Government 
 takes the present high rents for land, and does not 
 leave a larger margin of profit to the cultivators or 
 small proprietors, these cannot afford to grow cotton 
 cheap, is a complaint betraying ignorance of the 
 first principles of political economy, and requiring 
 no answer. The land revenue of India is a property 
 like the incomes drawn by the landed gentry of 
 England from their estates, and we did not expect 
 from the Manchester School a protest against the 
 East-India Company for not resigning or abandon-
 
 OF INDIA IN 1833 AND 1853. 41 
 
 ing that property in order to create a similar class 
 in India where at present it is nonexistent. 
 
 Cotton has no superior claim to sugar and indigo 
 and other products of the land, that it should be 
 especially favoured by remissions of rent. If those 
 other products are preferred for cultivation, it is 
 because their market price affords a better hope of 
 profit. They have not suffered equal depression in 
 the markets of Europe. Manchester offers only 3c?. 
 a pound, which is not a remunerating price for the 
 cotton of India. China, at present, offers more, and 
 therefore the bulk of the Indian production of this 
 article, that is to say, the surplus not used for its 
 home manufacture, is exported eastward, where it 
 is not undersold by the rival produce of America. 
 The cotton malcontents, however, dwell much on 
 the want of roads and railways for the conveyance 
 of Indian cotton from Berar and Central India, 
 where it is principally grown, to the seaports of 
 the coast. A trunk line of railway communication 
 is certainly a desideratum not hitherto supplied, 
 nor have roads been provided so fully as every well- 
 wisher of India would desire. The want of them 
 affects, however, not cotton alone, but every staple 
 product of India ; and were the communications of 
 the country placed on the most efficient footing, we 
 do not see how the benefit thence resulting would 
 much affect the ratio in which the several staples 
 of India are now produced, or give the desired 
 preference to cotton over indigo, rice, and sugar. 
 
 But other parts of the Indian system of finance 
 are represented as oppressive to the population, and
 
 42 SOCIAL AND MORAL CONDITION OF INDIA. 
 
 destructive to their social and moral improvement. 
 The salt revenue, which trebles the cost of a neces- 
 sary of life to the consumer, and the opium revenue, 
 which is realized in Bengal by a monopoly of the 
 production, and resale for exportation, and of 
 which the cost is recovered many-fold from 
 China by a contraband import of demoralizing 
 influence both to seller and to consumer, have 
 now, as heretofore, been made the subject of 
 much declamatory invective. But these resources 
 have already more than once been subjected 
 to Parliamentary scrutiny, and have survived ex- 
 amination by hostile committees. We doubt 
 not, therefore, that the committees now sitting 
 will see no urgent necessity for interfering with 
 either asset. 
 
 Our Indian Budget cannot hope to escape the 
 fate of all schemes of taxation. There is no impost 
 that a financier, howsoever ingenious, could devise, 
 which might not be proved onerous, oppressive, and 
 objectionable, when discussed per se and examined 
 on its own merits. But before a tax is condemned 
 and abandoned, its demerit must be established, 
 relatively on one hand to the amount of revenue 
 realized, and on the other to projects for raising the 
 same amount by other means. On this ground at 
 present we are content to let the expediency of re- 
 taining the salt and opium revenues rest. Four 
 millions sterling are too much to be sacrificed to a 
 principle of political economy, even were it clearly 
 established that the system of levy was in both 
 cases injurious and oppressive ; but arguments are
 
 POLICE. 
 
 not wanting in support of both, which, if it were a 
 question what part of the taxation of India should 
 preferably be first remitted, would entitle these to 
 a low place in the list of her oppressive burthens. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 POLICE. 
 
 REVENUE systems, however, have not so much to 
 do with the moral and social condition of a people, 
 as the police and the administration of justice. 
 With respect to police, it is alleged, that notwith- 
 standing the minuteness of returns respecting 
 crimes, apprehensions, and punishments, the system 
 is faulty, and defective in the extreme ; that the 
 European magistrates are few and distant, and get 
 no aid from a local gentry or from the population ; 
 while the police force consists of ill-paid function- 
 aries (daroghas and thanadars), sprinkled over the 
 country, each with ten or twenty armed retainers, 
 who are generally strangers to the district, and who 
 are available only for extortions, and make it their 
 business to vex the wealthy and well-doing, until 
 corrupted, and then to wink at their crimes and 
 acts of oppression and violence. 
 
 There is no doubt that this complaint against our 
 Indian police establishments is in a great measure 
 just ; but it is of old date, and has been repeated 
 on each occasion of revision since 1793, when the 
 system was established. In the past twenty years
 
 44 POLICE. 
 
 various efforts have been made to improve the police 
 force, and separate magistrates and joint and deputy 
 magistrates, not of the covenanted service, have been 
 appointed, in the hope that by thus associating in 
 the work of superintendence, influential natives of 
 India, and others, the working of this department 
 might proceed more smoothly and more in accordance 
 with the public feeling. The salaries of the daroghas, 
 or head local police agents, have also been largely 
 increased, in the hope by that means of securing 
 their honesty ; but all these measures would seem to 
 be of doubtful benefit, for -the population still loudly 
 complain. The substitution for existing police esta- 
 blishments of a gendarmerie, with more or less of 
 military organization, has been advocated by many 
 as a remedy for the present inefficiency and corrup- 
 tion. This system was adopted for the preventive 
 force organized for the suppression of murder by 
 Thugs, in consequence of military men being prin- 
 cipally employed on that duty. It has also been 
 used locally for other purposes with good effect, 
 more especially under the Bombay presidency ; but 
 the scheme, if made general, would, it is thought, 
 increase the power of the police over the population 
 without improving their local influence, while by 
 separating the force from the magistrates, it would 
 greatly lessen the authority of those officers. The 
 provincial battalions of Bengal were a local police 
 force of military organization, that added much to 
 the magistrates' power as an adjunct to that enter- 
 tained in the existing form. These battalions con- 
 tributed to the suppression of dacoity or gang-rob-
 
 POLICE, 45 
 
 bery by open violence, and were always available for 
 the prompt prevention of serious affrays ; but they 
 fell before the economical retrenchments and 
 sweeping reforms of Lord William Bentinck, and 
 have never since been revived. The provincial bat- 
 talions, however, were never proposed as a substitute 
 for the local police, whose omnipresence is the 
 source of all information : and on that account some 
 establishments similarly spread over the country, 
 would seem to be indispensable. But the question 
 how best to provide security to life and property 
 from crime and fraud and violence, without subject- 
 ing the population to vexatious interference and 
 oppression through the means adopted, remains still 
 in India an open problem. The Governments there 
 have found, that when crimes of great atrocity have 
 been discovered to prevail, as the dacoities or gang- 
 robberies of Bengal, and the murder of travellers by 
 Thugs, in Central and Southern India, they can, by 
 exertions beyond the law, and by creating a special 
 agency for the purpose, free the country from such 
 crying evils. They have always succeeded in sup- 
 pressing the crime, but never without risk of injury 
 and oppression to the innocent. A strengthening of 
 the police force carries with it necessarily this risk, 
 and therefore too great efficiency in this arm may 
 not always be a benefit. The rogue of ordinary life 
 too frequently at present escapes by corruption or 
 by chicanery, and the wealthy and influential land- 
 owner, who hires ruffians for an affray, evades 
 punishment by similar means ; and the impunity of 
 these leaves the system of our Indian police under its
 
 40 THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 
 
 present stigma of imperfection and failure. We seek 
 not to screen it from such imputations ; but, acknow- 
 ledging the establishment to be both inefficient and 
 corrupt, we yet maintain that districts, which possess 
 such a police as the Company's government have 
 given them, are better governed and afford to the 
 population far better securities for life and property, 
 than districts where there is nothing of the sort, 
 and in which the population are left to take care of 
 themselves. It is something to boast of, that a lone 
 woman may travel by dak from Calcutta to Pesha- 
 wur, without guard or escort, and with as much 
 security and confidence as upon any road of Europe. 
 The books of old travels in the East represent a very 
 different state of things. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 
 
 BUT the branch of Indian administration most 
 impugned, is that through which justice is dispensed 
 to the population in the East-India Company's 
 courts. It is alleged, that the system, being based 
 upon that of England, has been so contrived as 
 to encourage litigation, without affording ordinary 
 assurance that truth will be elicited and right pre- 
 vail that the judgment-seat is filled by persons who 
 have no professional education, and that the judges 
 having to decide both fact and law, so mix them up 
 in their judgments, as to deprive precedents of all
 
 THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 47 
 
 authority, and defy correction by appeal that 
 criminals escape with too much facility from an 
 over-scrupulousness about testimony and about 
 forms and last, but not least, that the court 
 officers, or Amla, have an influence both in bringing 
 on or keeping back causes, and in advising and 
 regulating the hearing of them, which they turn 
 universally to corrupt purposes, so as to leave the 
 administration of justice in the worst possible repute, 
 and open to the most serious of imputations. 
 
 It is impossible to deny that all these complaints 
 have much foundation in fact, and are supported by 
 the general opinion of the native and European 
 community in India; yet this very department of 
 civil and criminal justice has been more vexed and 
 troubled with calls for statements and returns and 
 other evidences of the desire of the Home Autho- 
 rities to watch over and improve it, than any 
 other. 
 
 The judicial system of India had its origin in the 
 " Plans for British India," prepared by Dundas, on 
 the first establishment of the Board of Control. 
 The materials for it were furnished by Sir Elijah 
 Impey, and the judicial part of Lord Cornwallis's 
 code of 1793 will be found to be little more than 
 a transcript from the book published in England 
 under the above title. During the governments of 
 Lord Wellesley and Lord Minto, this judicial system 
 was upheld as the department of adminstration 
 that was not only to preserve order and settle satis- 
 factorily all questions between man and man, but 
 to complete what was omitted in the formation of
 
 48 THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 
 
 the perpetual settlement of the land revenue, and 
 to adjust the relations of zemindars with their 
 tenantry, and of both with the Government. 
 
 So long as the judicial establishments were thus 
 looked upon as the organs of all improvement, and 
 the sources from which the people were to derive 
 such great prospective benefits, they were cultivated 
 and cherished, and the best public servants were 
 placed always in judicial situations, the refuse only 
 being left to find employment in the revenue depart- 
 ment, or in the establishments maintained to provide 
 articles for commercial investments and remittance. 
 
 At this period, and during the government of 
 Lord Minto especially, importance was attached to 
 the necessity of giving to judges a judicial training, 
 and the most promising junior servants being en- 
 couraged to make choice of this line of employment, 
 were retained in it, and rose through its different 
 grades by successive steps of well-defined increasing 
 emolument and authority. But this system was 
 abandoned between 1813 and 1833, and the prin- 
 ciple was then avowed, and has since been received 
 as orthodox, that no one can be a good judge who 
 has not been trained as an officer of the land re- 
 venue, and made familiar with the arrangements for 
 the settlement of relations between the Government 
 and those who pay that revenue, which are the 
 basis of the constitution and social system of 
 the country. For more than five-and-twenty years 
 this has been the rule acted upon in all the presi- 
 dencies, and in consequence the revenue authorities 
 have been elevated, as it were, above the judicial.
 
 THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 49 
 
 The first blow that was struck against the judi- 
 cial system of Lord Cornwallis was by Sir Thomas 
 Monro. In the evidence given by him to the Com- 
 mittees of Parliament which sat in 1812-13, he 
 described the District Courts as instruments of 
 mischief rather than of good, breeding a spirit of liti- 
 gation wherever established, and demoralizing the 
 people in other respects. He declared them to be, 
 in their management, corrupt and highly unpopular, 
 and fatal to all the existing institutions of the 
 country ; in short, quite unsuitable to the habits and 
 feelings of the population. Sir Thomas Monro was 
 a man of commanding influence, and his evidence 
 was implicitly relied upon. He was, in conse- 
 quence, sent out to Madras in 1815, with full 
 powers as commissioner to reverse this system at 
 that Presidency, and to transfer the powers of local 
 and prompt adjudication in civil matters, and all 
 magisterial authority, to revenue officers, upholding 
 them as the organs for the settlement of questions 
 of right and wrong, and as the authorities to whom 
 the population were to look, primarily, for all benefits 
 and for the redress of all grievances. The laws of 
 the Madras Presidency were immediately made 
 conformable to this change of principle and system ; 
 and Sir Thomas Monro, being afterwards appointed 
 Governor of that Presidency, himself completed the 
 work effectually, and reduced the courts to a secon- 
 dary, and almost subordinate condition to the revenue 
 authorities, filling them with servants of inferior 
 ability and consideration. It was a part of this 
 change to employ natives more largely in the judi- 
 
 E
 
 50 THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 
 
 dal as well as in the revenue establishments, and 
 the inferior jurisdiction, exercised before by junior 
 civil servants as registers, was transferred to Suddur 
 Ameens and other native judges. A judicial decree 
 still carried with it an authority which nothing but 
 reversal upon appeal could shake, but the revenue 
 officers settled the point of possession, and that was 
 most considered by the people. 
 
 The same principle was introduced in Bengal in 
 the early part of the government of Lord William 
 Bentinck, whose aim it was to lower the judicial 
 establishments, to reduce the number of covenanted 
 servants employed in them, and to raise the func- 
 tions of revenue officers, transferring to native 
 judges all the inferior jurisdiction vested be- 
 fore in the zillah register, with much also of 
 that exercised by zillah judges of the covenanted 
 service. 
 
 This was the state of things when the revision of 
 1833 brought the subject under the consideration 
 of Parliament. Then, as now, there were com- 
 plaints of the insufficient provision made for the 
 proper administration of justice in the territory 
 directly managed by the Governments of the East- 
 India Company. Under the conviction that these 
 complaints were not ill-founded, Parliament devised 
 the expedient of a Law Commission, and of a single 
 legislative council for all India, with a legal member, 
 purposely to remedy, by improved local legislation, 
 the admitted defects of this department at all the 
 presidencies. The Law Commission sat, and after 
 five years of cabinet deliberation, produced a criminal
 
 THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 51 
 
 code. It lias, however, given to India no law of pro- 
 cedure, civil or criminal ; and the judicial establish- 
 ments have been left, in consequence, on the unsatis- 
 factory footing, in this respect, on which they were 
 placed by Lord William Bentinck; with the difference, 
 that the jurisdiction of native judges has been much 
 further extended, and made to comprehend all origi- 
 nal suits without limit of amount, and even suits 
 between English residents and Europeans, and with 
 the extraordinary limitation of appeals to questions of 
 law, as if the judgment of these native judges upon 
 facts was sure to be unerring. The higher judgment- 
 seats are still filled by covenanted servants, but the 
 training they heretofore had as judges in courts of 
 inferior jurisdiction is discontinued, and the earlier 
 service of all the covenanted functionaries is now 
 confined to revenue and magisterial duties. 
 
 Such is the condition, judicially, of the provinces 
 directly governed by the East-India Company, and 
 one cannot wonder that complaints have reached 
 Parliament against the administration of justice un- 
 der such a system. It is, however, the quality of 
 the decisions, acts, and proceedings of the courts 
 that are now the subject of complaint. We cease 
 to hear of the delay of justice, which heretofore was 
 the gravamen of charge against the Company's 
 courts, nor is anything said of the insufficiency of 
 the establishments to perform the work required of 
 them ; but the stamp-duties levied on the institu- 
 tion of suits, and on petitions, exhibits, and wit- 
 nesses, are still a prominent grievance of the petition 
 to Parliament from Bengal. 
 
 E2
 
 52 NON-REGULATION PROVINCES 
 
 The complaint against the character of the jus- 
 tice administered in the Native Courts, has been 
 answered by producing returns of the number of 
 adjudicated cases, with the proportion of appeals, 
 and of reversals upon appeal, as if through such 
 returns the means were afforded of testing the 
 quality of the decisions, and as if they proved that, 
 if not satisfied with decisions thus ratified and con- 
 firmed on appeal, the population and those affected 
 by them, ought to have been so. The fact, however, 
 is incontrovertible, that neither the suitors nor the 
 native population, and least of all the European 
 residents in India, are satisfied with the present 
 administration of justice, and this fact alone is 
 sufficient to destroy the value of the returns as a 
 test of anything else than of the quantity of work 
 done. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 NON-REGULATION PROVINCES. LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 CIVIL SERVICE. 
 
 THE opinion entertained of the efficacy of courts 
 constituted on the principles of the legislation of 
 1793, and the idea that through them everything 
 left, in the first instance, undetermined, would 
 sooner or later be satisfactorily settled by judicial 
 decisions and precedents, was on the decline during 
 the government of the Marquis of Hastings. Lord 
 Wellesley, without any hesitation, subjected the
 
 LAW COMMISSION CIVIL SERVICE. 53 
 
 provinces he acquired by cession and conquest to 
 the same code of laws that he found in force and 
 admired in Bengal ; but Lord Hastings, not equally 
 satisfied with the working of that code, and having 
 before him the example of the Delhi districts, which 
 had thriven, though excluded from its operation, 
 hesitated to extend what was called the Regulation 
 System to his conquered territories. The districts 
 won from Nepal and from the Mahrattas were 
 accordingly administered executively under orders 
 from the Government, communicated through a 
 secretary, and not bearing the shape or formal 
 character of laws. This scheme has been continued 
 with all subsequent acquisitions, which are in con- 
 sequence styled at the present day, " Non-Regula- 
 tion Provinces." The establishments and forms of 
 procedure are analogous in most respects to those 
 prescribed by Regulation, or by Acts, for other 
 districts, although thus enjoined executively ; but 
 it is an anomaly that law-making by the Legislative 
 Council of India, should be confined to one half 
 only of the territory directly belonging to the 
 Crown of England, and in the East India Com- 
 pany's trust-management, while in the other half 
 it should be dispensed with. 
 
 It is alleged that the Government of these Non- 
 Regulation Provinces is better conducted, and gives 
 more satisfaction to the population than in districts 
 blessed or cursed with our code of laws ; and it 
 may well be so, because these territories are very 
 generally placed under selected men, and in India, 
 as elsewhere, the character of the functionary deter-
 
 54 NON-REGULATION PROVINCES 
 
 mines the quality of his administration, for good 
 or for ill. To an intelligent, well-meaning, exe- 
 cutive agent, placed in charge of new territory, 
 laws would prove only restraints upon the power 
 of doing good ; they are required, however, to 
 prevent those who follow from changing what is 
 once established, without sufficient cause, to keep 
 the ignorant or wilful from error, and to instruct 
 those who would fail if left to their own resources. 
 A separate code of instructions and rescripts grows 
 up for these Non-Regulation Provinces in the 
 course of their administration, and becomes the 
 rule of conduct for the functionaries employed, 
 but it is imperfect ; and the fact of these diver- 
 sities of system bears evidence to the confusion 
 and difficulties that prevail in the judicial admin- 
 istration of the country. The Law-Commission 
 and Legislative Council, provided for India in 1833, 
 have proved themselves hitherto quite incapable 
 of dealing with these difficulties. The twenty 
 years of their experimental legislation has left the 
 work of codification, for the establishment of one 
 simple and uniform course of procedure, w r orse than 
 incomplete, not even attempted. The advocates 
 of the Law-Commission declare that they had not 
 fair play ; because the Legislative Council and the 
 Government refused implicitly to follow their sug- 
 gestions, which were shaped ordinarily on the 
 extreme principles of Jeremy Bentham. But these 
 lawyers were not sent out to be decemvirs to over- 
 ride the Government ; the hope was, that they 
 would assist the authorities in India in accom-
 
 LAW COMMISSION CIVIL SERVICE. 55 
 
 plishing a work avowedly desired by all. If they 
 became the partizans of opinions opposed to those 
 of the Government, or of any extreme opinions, 
 that circumstance alone was sure to be fatal to 
 the completion of the work, and an expedient 
 liable to such an accident was of very doubtful 
 M'isdom. 
 
 Parliament and the public cannot hope that the 
 Committees now sitting in the two Houses will be 
 able to cope with questions in detail, which have 
 hitherto baffled the wisdom of local Legislators. 
 The Committees cannot be expected to suggest 
 provisions for the improvement of the existing 
 judicial code of India, and it never can be in- 
 tended that such should be incorporated in the new 
 Regulating Act for that country. Much of the 
 confusion and imperfection we now witness, has its 
 source in the vacillating policy that has been pur- 
 sued by Parliament itself and by the Home Au- 
 thorities on former occasions, and in the changes 
 which have come over public opinion here in 
 England, as to the fittest course to be taken upon 
 several of these Indian questions. The moral to be 
 drawn from which fact is, that it will be the wiser 
 policy to extend the power of the local Legislature 
 and of the local authorities, in the hope that 
 through the wisdom or inspiration of some men on 
 the spot, capable of watching effects, of tracing 
 them to their causes, and of applying remedies 
 suitable to the population and to the instruments 
 by which they are to be wrought, a scheme of 
 permanent improvement in these departments may
 
 56 NON-REGULATION PROVINCES 
 
 be struck out and engrafted upon the institutions 
 and habits of the country. But if we are to look 
 to this means of providing beneficial schemes of 
 improvement for India, she must be furnished 
 liberally with men of the class capable of devising 
 such schemes, and of watching their execution ; and 
 this is what the Legislature of England should make 
 it its first aim and object to secure. 
 
 Now the Government of India is administered in 
 all its highest branches by servants under covenant 
 to give their whole time and talents to the East 
 India Company, who are specially trained by a 
 course of preliminary instruction, and who go out 
 young, and rise by rotation to the higher situa- 
 tions. These are the civil servants, whose number, 
 instead of increasing with the extent of territory 
 and increased revenues, and with the increased call 
 upon them for administrative talent, has remained 
 for forty years nearly stationary in number, and 
 with allowances diminished by a quarter of a million 
 sterling in Bengal alone, as we have above shown. 
 Either this system and method of providing public 
 servants for India is a bad one, and ought to be dis- 
 continued, or manifest injustice has been done to 
 India by stinting the supply of servants of this 
 privileged and exclusive class, and compelling the 
 transfer to others of the duties which it was the in- 
 tention of the Legislature that they only should 
 discharge, and which they are considered to be the 
 best able to discharge. 
 
 The advantages of a special class of servants for 
 the duties of civil administration may be summed
 
 LAW COMMISSION CIVIL SERVICE. 57 
 
 up briefly thus : 1st. By tests of examination be- 
 fore nomination to such a service, you secure a 
 certain preliminary education and competency. 
 2nd. You may improve this by imparting what 
 further instruction is deemed useful, either of a 
 general or special nature. 3rd. Entering the 
 service in the lower grades, and rising by rotation 
 to the higher, the servants acquire official aptitude 
 and a familiarity with the forms and processes of 
 administration, which is of infinite use and benefit 
 when they come to be legislators, or are placed in 
 positions to depend on their own resources for the 
 management of large interests or populous districts. 
 4th. The service is disciplined to yield obedience to 
 superiors ; every one knows his place, and does not 
 presume beyond it. On the other hand, there is, 
 5th, an independence of spirit bred by the certainty 
 of rise, that insures the best suggestions being 
 offered, and even remonstrances against unwise or 
 hasty measures : so that the official correspondence 
 of India, instead of being habitually subservient to 
 the caprices or chance views of the Head of the 
 Government for the time being, contains always 
 the aggregate wisdom and experience of the whole 
 body of functionaries. But the most important 
 benefit of all is, 6th, that the Governor-General and 
 Governors being bound to make their selection for 
 office from these special servants, with whom they 
 are, upon appointment to the country, for the 
 first time brought into relation, have only the motive 
 of benefit to the public service to guide them in the 
 selection ; and in such a field as India, no one, uii-
 
 58 NON-REGULATION PROVINCES 
 
 less so bound down, could be trusted with the exer- 
 cise of so vast a patronage. 
 
 There is a further benefit of this system not to be 
 forgotten, though there are those who will scarcely 
 admit it to be one ; and that is, that in consequence 
 of the governing functionaries being all born and 
 bred in this United Kingdom, although bound by 
 the tie of interest as well as by covenant to devote 
 the best part of their lives to India, and being sure, 
 if they live, of returning to their native country 
 with a competency, when their term of service is 
 completed, the Government is certain to be conducted 
 in due subservience to England, and with efforts to 
 prevent alienation on the part of the governed, at the 
 same time that their happiness and advance in the 
 same career of progress is promoted. Leave the 
 Governor-General, or the local Governors, free to 
 select administrators from adventurers in the coun- 
 try, or from influential persons of the population, 
 and the cry for self-government and for independent 
 action would soon become irresistible. Local parties 
 would be formed who must be conciliated by admis- 
 sion to office, and the country from one end to the 
 other would be rent by faction, so as to present 
 difficulties in the administration quite insurmount- 
 able. And if the exclusive-service system were 
 abandoned for civil government how maintain it 
 for officering an army of 300,000 men which has 
 been raised in India, and of the fidelity of which, 
 under the existing constitution of government for 
 that country, we have now for one hundred years 
 had such signal and continuous proof?
 
 LAW COMMISSION CIVIL SERVICE. 59 
 
 But the great complaint against the special civil ser- 
 vice is, that the instances of splendid or unusual talent 
 are rare, and quite insufficient for the wants of legis- 
 lation, and for the occasions when resources of more 
 than usual fertility and vigour are required. It is 
 called a service of mediocrity, eclipsed often by the 
 talents elicited in the larger service provided for the 
 army, and likely to be eclipsed by the educated of 
 India under the new system of instruction. The 
 officers of the army are doubtless a body of 5,000 
 educated Englishmen ; the working civil servants 
 number, for all the presidencies, only 600, or at 
 most 700. It would be very extraordinary if from 
 the larger number a select few were not found of very 
 superior qualification, whom it would be a grievous 
 shame, and blot upon the constitution provided for 
 India, to exclude from the employments for which 
 they prove themselves to be so well fitted. Let those 
 who attain distinction in this class stand, as they de- 
 serve to do, on equality with the distinguished civil 
 servants in their claims for promotion even to the 
 highest civil offices. The limited number of the 
 special class requires such an infusion of talent from 
 the sister service ; and if this field were closed 
 against the ambitious and aspiring of that service, 
 whose united action is so essential to the prestige 
 and permanence of our dominion in India, we 
 might find in the jealousy and ill-will engendered, 
 sources of a confusion which no authority, at home 
 or abroad, could hope to control or prevent from 
 bursting out. But the fact, that men of talent are 
 found in this larger class, whom the Governments
 
 60 NON-REGULATION PROVINCES, ETC. 
 
 are glad to add to the stinted number of specially 
 educated and trained servants, is no reason for 
 deciding against the system of thus choosing and 
 educating the functionaries required for the ordinary 
 duties of administration. A special education and 
 training are required for the church, the law, and 
 for other professions, learned and unlearned, and 
 surely the career of a civil functionary, in a country 
 differing in language, habits, and institutions, 
 requires also the special training, which, if made 
 a condition of employment, must make the body of 
 servants exclusive. 
 
 Many ingenious propositions have been made for 
 the improvement of the qualifications of civil ser- 
 vants, and to elevate their character as public 
 functionaries. At the revision of 1833 it was 
 enacted that the nominations to the preparatory 
 college should be four for every civilian appointed 
 to the service. It was hoped that by making the 
 college examinations the test of comparative merit, 
 and rejecting the less distinguished, all the servants 
 sent out might be emeriti, that is, be selected for 
 superior talent displayed in their college career. But 
 to this plan the Court of Directors opposed insu- 
 perable objections, deeming it unreasonable and 
 unfair to require three youths to submit to the course 
 of special collegiate training, in order to be abso- 
 lutely rejected, for one that might be chosen. The 
 preliminary examination has been, in consequence, 
 substituted as the test of merit, and as a means of 
 excluding the less qualified. Can that system be 
 improved ? is the great question for consideration at
 
 THE FREE PRESS, ETC. 61 
 
 the present juncture. We doubt it, exceedingly. 
 There is complaint that the preliminary examina- 
 tions are at present too stringent. The complaint 
 is evidence of a wholesome state, and shows that 
 the examinations are useful in excluding the less 
 qualified, which was the purpose for which they were 
 devised ; but if it be desired to make them more 
 stringent, in order that the civil service may be yet 
 more select, the body of examiners must be strength- 
 ened, to enable them to cope with the odium of 
 multiplied rejections, and with the imputations of 
 favouritism and partiality that would inevitably be 
 cast upon them. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE FREE PRESS AND EDUCATION IN INDIA. 
 
 ONE argument against the present exclusive ser- 
 vice is based upon what is called the increasing 
 intelligence of the native and European communi- 
 ties in India ; and this brings us to speak of the con- 
 dition of the press, and of education there. 
 
 Before 1833 there were books printed and news- 
 papers even daily newspapers issued in each of the 
 presidency towns, but there was nothing that could 
 be called a press, in the sense in which the term is 
 used in Europe. No appeals were made to the 
 native public through that medium ; no original 
 works were published in the native languages for 
 purposes of agitation, that is, calculated and intended
 
 62 THE FREE PRESS 
 
 to give a particular direction to the native mind, 
 and to excite classes of the population to a particular 
 course of action. But all this has grown up within 
 the last twenty years, and has been rather encouraged 
 than checked by the measures of the governing 
 authorities. Of these measures the most prominent 
 was the legislative Act of Lord Metcalfe, passed in 
 1835, for removing the censorship of the newspaper 
 press. From that date every one has been permitted 
 to publish and circulate what he pleased, in what 
 language he pleased, subject only to the necessity of 
 registering the name and residence of the respon- 
 sible editor of each newspaper, and of exhibiting on 
 every printed paper the name of the printer, with 
 the locality of his press. Thus, responsibility to the 
 law is now the only check upon publication in India, 
 and that check is less feared and less seldom applied 
 there than under the most liberal Government of 
 Europe. There has, consequently, grown up in the 
 eighteen years which have passed since 1835, not 
 only a free, but a licentious press ; and we have to 
 deal now with the state of things resulting. 
 
 In like manner there have been great efforts 
 made, as well by the Government as by different 
 missionary societies, and by individuals, to promote 
 the spread of education in India. Until 1833-34, 
 the Government patronage was given, sparingly 
 indeed, but indiscriminately, to scholastic institu- 
 tions and colleges, which gave instruction, either in 
 English or according to the systems which prevailed 
 in the country ; that is to say, to Mahomedans 
 through the medium of the Persian and Arabic Ian-
 
 AND EDUCATION IN INDIA. G3 
 
 guages ; to Hindoos, in Sanscrit and the vernacular 
 languages. In these latter institutions English was 
 taught to those who desired it, in addition to their 
 usual scholastic course. But very soon after the 
 passing of the Act of 1833, the government of 
 Lord W. Bentinck came to the resolution to with- 
 draw prospectively from all support or encourage- 
 ment to education in the native form, and discoun- 
 tenancing any cultivation of the literatures of the 
 East, to confine the Government patronage and 
 superintendence exclusively to seminaries which 
 taught the science and literature of Europe through 
 the medium of the English language. It was part 
 of this project to convert existing native seminaries 
 into schools and colleges on the new plan, by trans- 
 ferring to teachers of English the allowances enjoyed 
 by moolavees and pundits, upon each successive 
 vacancy, and to teach the multiplication table even 
 in English, and not in the languages of the country. 
 
 Great alarm was felt at the announcement of this 
 sudden change, and the native communities, Hindoo 
 and Moosulman, were by no means satisfied when 
 vernacular instruction was added to that of English, 
 which was a concession made very soon after the 
 original resolution had passed, in consequence of the 
 strenuous opposition raised against it. The ques- 
 tion, what was to become of the colleges heretofore 
 founded, some of them many generations back, to 
 give instruction in Arabic and Sanscrit ? continued 
 long to agitate the community. After some years 
 of hot controversy, in which the members of the 
 services took part as strenuous partisans on one side
 
 64 THE FREE PRESS 
 
 or the other, the matter was compromised by Lord 
 Auckland, he consenting to leave the professors of 
 existing native seminaries in the enjoyment of 
 the Government contributions heretofore assured to 
 them, merely requiring these institutions to include 
 English among the things taught. The difference 
 was made up to the new English schools and col- 
 leges by a fresh pecuniary grant. 
 
 In all the seminaries supported by Government, 
 out of respect for the prejudices and feelings of those 
 whose children it is desired to educate, and to pre- 
 vent their supposing the object of this effort to 
 instruct to be, to win them from the faith of their 
 fathers, and to make proselytes to Christianity, it is 
 provided, that no minister of religion shall be 
 employed as a teacher, nor the Scripture of any sect 
 be used as a class-book. But missionary schools 
 proceed on a different principle, and freely teach 
 the Bible as a class-book. Such schools are numer- 
 ous, and many of them are supported by liberal 
 private contributions, which enable them to give 
 instruction, either gratuitously, or at very cheap 
 rates. They have accordingly prospered, and are 
 the means of educating numbers of the population, 
 daily on the increase. But the classes who have 
 derived their instruction from these seminaries have 
 been comparatively of low grade in native society, 
 and of narrow circumstances, and no regard what- 
 ever is paid in them to caste. 
 
 For twenty years this system has been at work, 
 and there have in consequence been turned out of 
 the Government and private seminaries more than
 
 AND EDUCATION IN INDIA. 65 
 
 one thousand youths annually at each presidency, 
 who have had a course of instruction similar in all 
 respects to that communicated in the schools and 
 universities of England. The first-class scholars of 
 the higher colleges, pass nearly as good an examina- 
 tion as the young men of Hai ley bury, Oxford, or 
 Cambridge ; but it is exclusively English literature 
 and science that these young men acquire. The col- 
 lege prize-men are rarely Sanscrit and Arabic scho- 
 lars, but make it their aim and pride in after-life to 
 display proficiency in European science ; and if they 
 become authors, as vanity leads many of them to do, 
 they write in English. There is, however, another 
 class of students, who cultivate at the same time 
 their own language and literature, and through 
 whom European ideas are being fast inculcated, in 
 the popular form of newspapers circulated in the 
 languages of the country, and perused by as many 
 of the population as can read or understand. At 
 present this is a very small proportion of the whole, 
 consisting of the educated few who reside in or near 
 the presidency towns, or are sprinkled over the 
 country as subordinate officials. The free press 
 of India has hitherto had its influence for good or 
 for ill only among these, and if its effects have not 
 been pernicious, we must bear in mind that there 
 has yet been no reading public. 
 
 The press, however, has been the channel through 
 which many disappointed persons have attacked 
 the Government and the system for yielding them 
 no promotion equal to their assumed merit. It 
 has been freely resorted to by persons who fancy
 
 66 THE FREE PRESS 
 
 themselves aggrieved, to make known their inju- 
 ries, and to appeal for sympathy or for redress. It 
 has also been used by intriguers and designing men 
 for the promotion of less worthy ends. Official 
 persons and even members of the Government have 
 frequently been attacked by the press, sometimes 
 acrimoniously and very often unjustly, but they have 
 never been advised to seek redress from the courts 
 of law. Some of these are loud in complaint of the 
 freedom and licentious spirit of which they are the 
 victims ; some have truckled to it and have courted 
 the favour of those who edit newspapers or write for 
 the press ; and others have sought to influence the 
 press by writing themselves, or by becoming pro- 
 prietors of newspapers ; but this, when known to the 
 Government, has been censured, and the practice of 
 answering in person accusations made by the press 
 has more than once been reprobated. But there is 
 no consistent action on the part of the Governments 
 of India or of their functionaries, either against the 
 press or to use it as a means of influencing public 
 opinion favourably. The engine has not yet become 
 sufficiently efficacious for good or evil, nor suffi- 
 ciently formidable to need so much attention from 
 the governing authorities ; but it is watched and 
 will daily require to be more so, as the reading 
 classes increase through the spread of education, 
 which the Governments at home and abroad are 
 endeavouring by all means to promote. 
 
 It is a proud thing to contemplate as of possible 
 accomplishment in the course of ages, if our domi- 
 nion in India should so long last, that the science
 
 AND EDUCATION IN INDIA. 67 
 
 and modes of thinking, and perhaps even the lan- 
 guage and literature of England, will ultimately be 
 so engrafted by education into the habits of the people 
 as to supersede the varied and imperfect methods 
 of acquiring and imparting knowledge which have 
 so long prevailed. There are sanguine men who 
 expect to bring about this great result, in the course 
 of a few generations, and who deem the Govern- 
 ment lax and neglectful for not making greater 
 exertions and greater sacrifices than they have done 
 to promote this glorious end. But it is a matter 
 in which success may be compromised by attempting 
 too much ; and it may not be the part of wisdom 
 to flood the country indiscriminately with the over- 
 flowings of European intelligence, in the idea that 
 out of the deluge an improved condition must of 
 necessity arise. It has, indeed, often struck dispas- 
 sionate observers as passing strange that the Govern- 
 ments of India, with full knowledge of the power 
 of a free press over a reading public, and having in 
 their own hands the creation of that reading public, 
 should seek no means of giving an impulse to the 
 intelligence it is communicating favourable to the 
 cause of order ; in other words, favourable to them- 
 selves, and to the system they administer. The aim 
 hitherto has been confined too much to imparting the 
 power of reading and of understanding what is 
 read, as if knowledge of all kinds, obtained from 
 books of all descriptions, must equally and of 
 necessity lead to good ; and the spirit of inquiry 
 when once set in action could only confirm the stu- 
 dent's mind in sentiments of wisdom, virtue, and 
 
 F2
 
 68 THE FREE PRESS 
 
 contentment. But does man need no help in this 
 pursuit of knowledge, no guidance in the right path 
 to political as well as to religious wisdom ? Is there 
 no risk that imperfect knowledge may breed envy, 
 and lead to agitation, and even to disaffection and to 
 crime, through false or mistaken views derived from 
 this ill-regulated instruction ? The justification of 
 Brutus and Cassius for the assassination of Csesar, 
 the vindication of Washington and the North 
 American Colonists for rising against the British 
 Crown, are favourite theses for declamation in the 
 colleges of Calcutta, and notions of the right of 
 every population to self-government, and of the 
 virtue of agitation to obtain power, are fast gaining 
 ground among the vain and presumptuous eleves of 
 the Government colleges. They never think of 
 inquiring into the circumstances which give fitness 
 to exercise power, and dispose the governed to 
 yield obedience, nor respecting the sources whence 
 authority of every kind is derived, and the means 
 and instruments by which it is maintained. They 
 are fast ceasing, in consequence, to appreciate the 
 blessings of peace and of order, which it has not been 
 their fortune to see locally disturbed, and to regard 
 these, as every one who has lived in troubled times 
 learns to do, as the end and aim and the real test 
 of all government. That men are capable of being 
 trained up in principles of obedience and discipline, 
 while they reach the very highest ranks in litera- 
 ture and science, is proved by what is done in 
 seminaries maintained for religious purposes, and 
 directed by Jesuits and others. Although we want
 
 AND EDUCATION IN INDIA. 69 
 
 not to instil principles of Romish subserviency of 
 mind in the people of India, it ought surely to be 
 our aim, to save the young, enterprising, and aspiring 
 from receiving hasty and erroneous impressions, the 
 result of an imperfect understanding of the require- 
 ments of their country, and of their own position. 
 Why should the seeds of disaffection and disloyalty 
 be sown by our own hand, in a soil well prepared 
 to receive lessons of order, and impressions favour- 
 able to the permanence of British rule ? This is a 
 subject to which the attention of the governing 
 authorities of India will require to be especially 
 directed in the coming twenty years, but we do not 
 see how it could be touched with benefit by the 
 Imperial Legislature. 
 
 It is undoubtedly a new status to be taken into 
 account, as an element in future arrangements, that 
 we are fast creating in India both a free press and 
 a reading public ; but we look upon this only as a 
 motive for extending the powers of those who will 
 have locally to deal with these rising sources of 
 good or evil, and it is a reason conclusive for being 
 careful hereafter to select always for the highest 
 stations in India, men capable of exercising and 
 worthy to be entrusted with such powers. The 
 influence for evil or for good, that attaches in India 
 to the personal character of a Governor-General or 
 Governor, can only be imperfectly understood by 
 the people of England, and even by her statesmen 
 and public men. The subject merits a separate 
 essay, and might be illustrated with great effect by 
 reference to the past. But the future opens a
 
 70 THE FREE PRESS 
 
 field in which more than ever will, not only the 
 course of political events, but the character and 
 sentiments of the population, take their direction 
 from the impulse given by the all-powerful head of 
 the State. Every Governor or Governor-General, 
 carries with him to India the prestige of British 
 power, and of the wishes and sentiments of the 
 entire British nation, towards their fellow-subjects 
 in the country he is sent to rule. Large as the 
 power of the Governor-General is, and has been, no 
 one advocates its diminution. Provide him with 
 constitutional advisers of the highest order ; increase 
 his motives for doing well ; and impose the obliga- 
 tion of consulting and deliberating on all matters ; 
 but place on him no restraints of reference to Eng- 
 land for previous sanction. The power of action, 
 and even of legislation, must be complete locally in 
 India, subject only to the checks of perfect uni- 
 versal record, as at present, and of after-review and 
 after-criticism with their responsibilities. A great 
 measure of any kind, if made to depend on the 
 result of a previous reference to England for sanc- 
 tion, would be sure to miscarry, from the indecision 
 of those to whose judgment it would have to 
 be submitted. A distant and divided authority 
 could never be made equally to feel the necessity 
 of prompt action ; but, from sheer timidity, would 
 pare down the measure, and cramp it with checks 
 and conditions destructive to its efficacy, if even 
 the end were not absolute prohibition to incur risk. 
 But if in the increasing enlightenment of India 
 we see reason only for enlarging the discretionary
 
 AND EDUCATION IN INDIA. 71 
 
 powers of the local Governments, and for endea- 
 vouring to fill them with first-class statesmen, so 
 also do we see, not only no reason for abandoning 
 the system of providing exclusive civil and military 
 services for the executive duties of administration, 
 but a motive for enlarging, strengthening, and im- 
 proving to the utmost the services now in existence. 
 How strengthen, how improve ? is the question. An 
 addition to their number is easy and necessary, and 
 out of that very addition must arise a greater 
 variety, and a higher range of talent for the most 
 prominent situations. But this is not enough. 
 Assuming the present examinations to exclude men 
 absolutely incompetent and uneducated, how are 
 they to be improved after admission to the service ? 
 Does the education now given produce a fair pro- 
 portion of men of average, and of superior talent, or 
 have we nothing but barren, hopeless mediocrity ? 
 
 The servants in India may be ranged under three 
 heads : first, men of energy and of action, who are 
 ordinarily those who in early youth attain no col- 
 legiate distinctions, but whose character has been 
 developed afterwards, and brought out by the cir- 
 cumstances in which they are placed ; secondly, 
 men of real talent, of resources, devices, and ex- 
 pedients, who have views upon every subject, more 
 or less enlarged, more or less liberal. These men 
 are necessarily few in number, and are sure to force 
 themselves early into prominent positions. If to such 
 talents the energy of action be united, as was the 
 case eminently with Sir Thomas Monro, there is no 
 distinction to which the holders may not aspire.
 
 72 THE FREE PRESS, ETC. 
 
 The valuable servants are those known for qualities 
 of this first or second kind ; but there is a third 
 class, and a very numerous one it is in India, who 
 have no original views or conceptions, but readily 
 pick up, and acquire, and bring into use the ideas of 
 others, and adopt always the principles most in 
 vogue. Very many of the most distinguished men 
 in college never rise out of this class; and it is 
 doubtful whether the severest college tests would 
 ever ensure more than the mediocrity of such 
 capability and such attainments. A Clive or a 
 Napoleon Bonaparte might fail to pass them and be 
 lost to the service. It behoves us, therefore, to be 
 especially careful not to base the selection for 
 Indian service too exclusively on book-learning. 
 Necessary, as we admit it to be, that every civil 
 servant sent to India should be well versed in the 
 literature and science of the day, and not ashamed 
 to meet the Sieves of Indian seminaries, who are 
 instructed in the same course of education with 
 themselves, this is not all that is required to com- 
 mand their respect. There must be an acknow- 
 ledgment of superior general intelligence in the 
 members of the civil service, but there must also be 
 a recognition of qualities in which the natives of 
 India know themselves to be deficient. 
 
 It does not, however, appear, that under any cir- 
 cumstances this matter could be fully regulated by 
 any specific acts or provisions of the imperial legis- 
 lature. Anxious as every one in England must be, 
 that those selected to represent their country, and 
 to fulfil her function of sovereign ruler over the vast
 
 PUBLIC WORKS. 73 
 
 dominion acquired in the East, shall always prove 
 themselves worthy of her name and glory ; we know 
 of no legislative device by which this object could 
 be secured, any more than higher qualities and su- 
 perior wisdom in other classes of her statesmen, 
 warriors, and legislators. It were idle to attempt 
 providing for such things by law. The qualifica- 
 tions for historical deeds must depend on the mo- 
 tives of action, and on the circumstances into which 
 men are thrown during their career, rather than 
 upon the early training and instruction, that can be 
 secured to them by examinations, or imparted by a 
 course of collegiate education. If Englishmen at 
 home were to degenerate and cease to maintain 
 their credit for superiority of intelligence, and for 
 high-minded, disinterested, and earnest action for 
 the public good, in vain should we hope to main- 
 tain the prestige of the greatness of England in the 
 East. Providence has given our country a high 
 destiny there, let us hope that she will be enabled to 
 accomplish it worthily. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 IN connection with the social and moral improve- 
 ment of India lies the question of public works, roads, 
 bridges, jails, canals, railroads, postal communications, 
 telegraphs, harbours, lighthouses, establishments for 
 pilotage, or otherwise for the benefit of commerce
 
 74 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 
 and navigation. All these matters are well deserv- 
 ing of attention from the Committees of Parliament 
 now sitting. It is right that the East-India Company 
 and the Governments of India should be called upon 
 to show what has been done there under each of 
 these heads. If neglect or short-coming be proved, 
 let the blame be cast where it is due ; but whether 
 these things have been sufficiently cared for, or 
 have been neglected, we do not suppose it to be 
 intended to found upon the result of the inquiry any 
 specific measures of imperial legislation. We are well 
 aware that that there is a class of public men and of 
 writers for the periodical press who dwell continually 
 on the short-comings of the Indian Governments in 
 the provision they have made for all these objects. 
 Some even go the length of arguing the entire failure 
 of the trust-management of India in the present 
 hands, because more has not been done in this way 
 than the returns submitted to Parliament exhibit. 
 But the financial statements we have cited above 
 show, that the resources of the country were for the 
 whole period of this trust-management strained to 
 the utmost to maintain and improve our political 
 condition. Surely precedence was rightly given to 
 that object over outlays upon works of improvement, 
 howsoever urgent. The members of the Peace 
 Society exclaim, that several of the wars entered 
 into were unnecessary, and that the sums spent in 
 them might more advantageously have been applied 
 to these works of improvement : and of this there 
 can be no doubt whatsoever. But these objectors 
 did not take this line while the policy of the wars
 
 PUBLIC WORKS. 75 
 
 was before Parliament, and when their vote or their 
 remonstrance might have been effective to stop the 
 expenditure. The Legislature has now to deal 
 with the fact, that the money was expended upon 
 wars, and not upon works of improvement, and the 
 public must bear in mind, that the responsibility for 
 the wars is one thing, and the responsibility for not 
 executing the works by preference, quite another. 
 
 Since 1833, allowing for the reductions made 
 through the sale of commercial assets, there have 
 been upwards of sixteen millions added to the public 
 debt of India, and in the same interval there have 
 been spent on works of improvement only about five 
 millions. This expenditure seems, under the circum- 
 stances, to be even liberal. When the capitalists of 
 India or of England shall combine to project and 
 execute railways and other works of profit, in the 
 manner witnessed in Europe, then only will India 
 cease to bear the reproaches now heaped upon her 
 for the little done. The Government is at present 
 expected, and called upon to do every thing, because 
 the population originates nothing, and yet there are 
 persons who claim for that population the right of 
 self-government on the ground of its intelligence. 
 
 We have thus referred briefly to the several sub- 
 jects of inquiry, by which the condition of India is to 
 be judged. Let the result be satisfactory or the con- 
 trary, no action of the Imperial Legislature can be 
 applied to remedy or correct what may be found 
 faulty in that condition. Its efforts must be con- 
 fined to providing a machinery of government 
 capable of doing what is required in India, and that
 
 76 HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 brings us to the all-important questions : " Is the 
 present machinery of government sufficient ? What 
 defects and imperfections have the experience of 
 the past twenty years brought to light ? Of what 
 improvements is the existing constitution of govern- 
 ment at home and abroad susceptible ? " 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 THE Home Government consists of a minister for 
 India, called a President of the Board of Control, 
 with two Secretaries, changeable with each change 
 of Government. This minister originates the de- 
 spatches to India, in the secret department, bearing 
 on questions of peace or war, but is compelled to 
 use the agency of a secret committee of three Di- 
 rectors for their transmission to India. Upon all 
 other subjects the Crown Minister revises, and may 
 arrest or modify the orders sent out. But the first 
 review, the initiative of those orders, is taken by a 
 Council or Court of twenty-four East-India Di- 
 rectors, elected by about 2,300 holders of 1,000 of 
 East-India Stock. Each Director serves for four 
 years, and then for one year is excluded. This is 
 the machinery provided by the Legislature for the 
 Home Government of India. It is objected to it, 
 first, that the double government, and separate con- 
 sideration of all matters by the Court of Directors 
 and the Board of Control, is fatal to prompt action
 
 HOME GOVERNMENT. 77 
 
 or consistent energetic supervision. For the remedy 
 of this it has been proposed to unite the Court and 
 Board, and to constitute the Minister for India 
 President of a Council of independent, irremovable 
 members, so chosen as to preserve all the advan- 
 tages of the existing Court, without its anomalies 
 and defects. Secondly, it is objected that the ex- 
 isting method of electing East-India Directors is 
 quite incongruous and unsuitable ; the proprietors 
 of East-India Stock having no longer any real 
 interest in India, nor more connection with that 
 country than the holders of any other national 
 stock, more especially since their property has been 
 collaterally secured by the guarantee fund invested 
 in the Consolidated Fund ; that, owing to the diffi- 
 culties and expense of the canvass, and the relations 
 arising from the mere pecuniary qualification to 
 elect, there is no assurance of the fittest men being 
 chosen to be Directors, but rather the contrary, the 
 fittest men being deterred by these very difficulties 
 from offering themselves as candidates. To meet 
 this objection and maintain the character of inde- 
 pendence enjoyed by the Court as now elected, we 
 have heard but of two propositions : one is, to give 
 the nomination of Directors, as vacancies occur, to 
 the Crown, but to require selection to be made of 
 the whole or of a proportion of these Directors 
 from servants who have returned from India, after 
 filling certain situations of high distinction. The 
 other proposition is to allow the Directors to fill a 
 certain proportion or the whole of the vacancies in 
 their own body by the nomination of servants of
 
 78 HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 this class ; so saving them the expense and labour 
 and delays of the canvass, and of the contests inci- 
 dent to the present method of election. 
 
 The first point to be determined in considering 
 these objections and the remedies proposed for 
 them is, whether the double government, and 
 separate consideration of all questions by two au- 
 thorities, is a wise arrangement, proper to be main- 
 tained, or the contrary. Undoubtedly, the divided 
 authority is fatal to prompt executive action. But 
 is that wanted ? Is that the purpose principally in 
 view in the formation of a home government for 
 India ? Assuredly not so. The prompt executive 
 action must be local must be vested in the Indian 
 Governments, subject to review and to responsibility. 
 The Home Government must exercise over the 
 Indian executive the same kind of control that 
 Parliament exercises over the Imperial executive. 
 Deliberation and free discussion by more than one 
 authority is the constitutional method in which that 
 control is exercised ; and there seems no reason 
 why this constitutional principle should be excluded 
 from the review of the proceedings and acts of the 
 Indian Governments. The calls for prompt action 
 are rare and occasional, if the double government 
 system provides a means for meeting these calls, 
 and for so satisfying the occasions, that is all that 
 is wanted : and the President of the Board of Con- 
 trol has authority for this, which he uses through 
 the secret committee. The deliberate examina- 
 tion and review of what has been administratively 
 done abroad, which is the ordinary and more im-
 
 HOME GOVERNMENT. 79 
 
 portant function of a Court of Directors or Home 
 Council for India, must rather gain than lose by 
 the duplicate and separate consideration given to 
 every subject by two authorities, emulating each 
 other in the desire to prove their vigilance and 
 capacity. 
 
 It is admitted on all sides, that a separate inde- 
 pendent council for Indian affairs is indispensible. 
 To obviate the alleged inconvenience of the double 
 government, it is proposed that the Crown minister, 
 or president of the Board of Control, shall preside in 
 that council, and act with it for the sake of greater 
 efficiency. On the same principle, the Lords and 
 Commons ought to sit and deliberate in one assem- 
 bly, while the Crown fulfilled the function of 
 Speaker, or president of the joint senate. But no 
 one in the present day advocates such a change in 
 the British constitution. So neither, considering 
 the nature of the principal functions to be per- 
 formed, can it be looked upon as an improvement 
 to give the Crown minister his seat in the Court of 
 Directors, where he would use his influence to sway 
 their deliberations to his preconceived views, and to 
 allow as little room as possible for the recorded 
 expression of differing sentiments. There is wanted 
 a power of prompt action somewhere, subject to 
 responsibility, and such a power must of necessity 
 be vested in the minister of the Crown ; for it is the 
 royal prerogative to decide upon questions of peace 
 or war, and to conduct diplomatic correspondence 
 and negotiations leading thereto ; and it is for these 
 that prompt action is needed. The President of the
 
 80 HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Board of Control is the royal minister, constitution- 
 ally vested with this function ; and under the ex- 
 isting system he uses it freely, without check, or 
 hindrance. But as India is in the trust-management 
 of an authority which has a name abroad, and con- 
 stitutional forms for the exercise of its powers in 
 India, a method has. been devised for transmitting 
 the orders of the Crown minister, which upholds the 
 prestige of that name, and of that authority. The 
 orders pass through a secret committee of the 
 Court of Directors, who have no power of deliber- 
 ating upon them, or of delaying the transmission. 
 An ill-judging minister of the Crown may do, and it 
 is said in the Afghan war did do, infinite mischief 
 in the exercise of this over-riding authority. By 
 compelling him to advise with a council of expe- 
 rienced Indian officers, the risk of hasty ill-con- 
 sidered orders would be diminished ; and it has 
 been proposed to give to the secret committee of the 
 Court of Directors a power of remonstrance, which, 
 at present, they do not consider themselves war- 
 ranted in claiming. It is also argued that the 
 Crown minister, being the sole judge of what falls 
 within his proper function, as the arbiter of peace 
 and war, may, unless checked by such remonstrance, 
 so use his powers as to supersede, altogether, or at 
 least for any effectual good, the authority of the 
 deliberative council, to which is intrusted the 
 function of general supervision and control. There 
 is no doubt that matters have occasionally been 
 placed in the secret department without sufficient 
 cause, and have been kept there longer than was
 
 HOME GOVERNMENT. 81 
 
 necessary or consistent with the legitimate authority 
 of the Court of Directors. No good reason appears 
 why the Secret Committee should not in all such 
 cases have the power of representation and remon- 
 strance, and it might, we think, be claimed by them 
 under the existing constitution of the Home Govern- 
 ment. But the committee must not delay the 
 transmission of orders and despatches sent by the 
 Crown Minister for that purpose. Whosoever is 
 responsible for prompt action when it is required, 
 must be absolute in his power of enforcing and 
 carrying through the measures he deems necessary. 
 Again, the permanence of the Secret Committee 
 at times when there are no wars and no fears of 
 war, is declared by some to be an evil, because 
 leading to the separation of certain parts of the 
 correspondence and proceedings of the Indian 
 Government from the same wholesome course of 
 supervision and control, that is provided for the 
 purpose of securing uniformity and preventing 
 errors and irregularities in the general proceedings 
 of the Indian Governments. If this be deemed a 
 valid objection, it might be obviated in some degree 
 by requiring a separate warrant or certificate in 
 each case, to authorise the withholding of corre- 
 spondence upon any given subject from the Court of 
 Directors. It must be recollected that the secresy 
 of records originates ordinarily with the Govern- 
 ments abroad, and not with the Home authorities ; 
 and their error in so treating what might not need 
 secresy, or their intentional withholding from the 
 Court at large of what ought to come before that 
 
 G
 
 82 HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 authority, may require correction. The requisition 
 of a special warrant to continue the secresy would 
 ensure always a deliberate consideration and 
 decision whether the case was such as to re- 
 quire it. 
 
 Thus, upon the question of the double Home 
 Government, the arguments appear to be conclusive 
 for retaining some separate authority, either a Court 
 of Directors, or a Royal Home Council of India, for 
 purposes of ordinary supervision and review, and 
 for having this duty performed subject to concur- 
 rence by another superior authority ; and, also, for 
 leaving with the Minister of the Crown, either as at 
 present, or with some modifications, the power of 
 prompt action in case of necessity. Shall the name 
 of the East-India Company be retained for this 
 Court or Council ? or shall the authority of the 
 Crown be at once asserted, and the entire govern- 
 ment of India, at home and abroad, be conducted in 
 the sovereign's name ? Undoubtedly, there would 
 be advantage in conferring vice-regal powers, and 
 the direct representation of the Crown on the Indian 
 Governments. They are brought up now at every 
 step by lawyers technically objecting that these 
 Governments, though of Parliamentary creation, 
 represent only a private company, and have none of 
 the rights and prerogatives which attach to every 
 colonial governor appointed directly by the Crown. 
 All such technical objections it is desirable to ter- 
 minate for ever on this occasion. But the name of 
 the East-India Company carries with it a prestige in 
 the East, that it would be unwise hastily and nnne-
 
 HOME GOVERNMENT. 83 
 
 cessarily to dispense with or destroy. The coin of 
 India now bears the effigy and name of the sove- 
 reign on the obverse ; but, on the reverse, in smaller 
 characters, and with less pretension, stands that of 
 the East-India Company, inscribed round the deno- 
 mination of the coin in the English and native Ian* 
 guages. Let both authorities continue in India in 
 the same relation, and it will be a source of strength 
 and credit. It will suffice that the Act to be now 
 passed should declare, specifically, that the local 
 Governments are thoroughly national, parliamen- 
 tary, and royal conducting the affairs of their 
 Governments under forms, and subject to constitu- 
 tional checks arranged by the Legislature for the 
 general benefit of the two countries. 
 
 But if there is to be an independent Court of 
 Directors, or British Council of India, separately 
 deliberating in some such relation as at present 
 exists between the present Court of Directors and 
 the Crown Minister, how shall it be constituted ? 
 How appointed ? It is declared to be an anomaly 
 that the power of election should continue in a 
 body of stockholders, who have none but a purchased 
 interest in India and its affairs, and no motive 
 therefore to encourage the proper class of persons 
 to seek the situation of Director, or to give their 
 votes to the best candidate in the field. The 
 election, as at present conducted, operates, it is said, 
 to exclude good men, presenting difficulties in 
 the canvass, and obstacles of expense and delay, 
 that prevent their offering themselves for selec- 
 tion. It needs a special connection with some 
 
 G 2
 
 84 HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 class or body of proprietors to induce any one to 
 come forward at all as a candidate, and he must 
 then wait a rotation-chance of years' duration be- 
 fore he can venture to proceed to the poll. The 
 elections are said to be managed, as by the caucuses 
 which regulate the election of a president of the 
 United States of America, each of the leading 
 parties into which the proprietary body is divided 
 determining among themselves which candidate to 
 bring forward, and the rest uniting with one or 
 other of those who carry out the contest, in expect- 
 ation to be similarly taken up in turn. All these are 
 evils incident to this particular mode of election, 
 and to the character of the constituent body. 
 
 There is no doubt that these are objections of 
 great weight, and it must be admitted in limme, 
 that the object on the present occasion being to 
 provide the best form of home council for India 
 that the circumstances of the case will permit, the 
 existing body of proprietors have no abstract or 
 vested right to exercise the function of electing 
 that body. If a less objectionable mode of nomi- 
 nation could be devised they would have no ground 
 for complaining of the deprivation or for claiming 
 pecuniary compensation ; their rights and interests 
 in that respect having been fully provided for by the 
 arrangements made to secure the full payment of 
 their capital. One benefit has, however, resulted 
 from the present form of election which is generally 
 acknowledged, and is of first-rate value, and that 
 is, that the politics of the day, and party or parlia- 
 mentary influences and interests, have no place
 
 HOME GOVERNMENT. 85 
 
 whatever in this constituency. The choice is not 
 always guided by considerations of personal fitness 
 or qualification : priority of application, importunity 
 of solicitation, hopes of patronage, banking, or other 
 similar connection, mutual concession, and jobbing ar- 
 rangements, by all these the promise of votes is 
 obtained, and an election carried. But no one asks 
 whether the candidate is Radical or Conservative, 
 Whig or Tory, Free-Trader or Protectionist. No 
 minister of the day can give an effectual recom- 
 mendation in favour of a candidate to whom he is 
 under obligation for political service or parliamen- 
 tary support, and it is of the utmost importance that 
 this exclusion of party and of political feelings should 
 if possible continue. If no method can be devised 
 for securing that exclusion, except by vesting the 
 elective franchise in a body of stockholders, anoma- 
 lous as such a constituency appears, abstractedly 
 considered, let it, we say, be continued for the sake 
 of that especial benefit. 
 
 But is the attempt desperate to exclude poli- 
 tical party from the nomination of members of the 
 required court or council, without compelling fit 
 candidates to pass the ordeal of a canvass, and of 
 election by such a constituency ? The Crown, it is 
 said, nominates judges from the bar, with reference 
 primarily to qualification for the bench, and with 
 a secondary preference only for party connexion. 
 Might not the Crown be trusted to choose simi- 
 larly from those who have served in India, the best 
 qualified for this court or council, and if not the 
 whole, at least a certain portion of the members ?
 
 86 HOME GOVERNMENT, 
 
 Another proposition is under consideration, and 
 that is, that the Court as at present existing-, or as 
 it may be constituted by the proposed Act of this 
 session, should have the power of selecting a 
 certain proportion of its own members without 
 canvass, under the condition of choosing from 
 retired servants of a defined rank, and reported to 
 be emeriti for services rendered in India. 
 
 These are questions that are now occupying 
 much of the public attention, and of which the 
 solution is expected from the Government measure 
 promised after Easter. 
 
 With respect to selection by the Crown, it is not 
 desired that the whole body of the Court or 
 Council, should be of the class of retired Indian 
 servants. Every one admits that there must be an 
 infusion of English principle, and of lay members. 
 If the whole body of the Court, therefore, were 
 nominated by the Crown, these lay members would 
 of necessity be chosen for party or Parliamentary 
 connexion. Once nominated, they might be irre- 
 movable for a term of years, which, in the alter- 
 nation of party supremacy, might produce its 
 proportion of each class. But this would leave 
 the evil unremedied, for the element of party strife 
 would be introduced, which it is so essential to 
 exclude, and even with respect to retired Indian 
 servants, if, of two men with equal claims, one 
 being a member of Parliament, habitually support- 
 ed the Ministry of the day, he would assuredly 
 be preferred for selection. Even in the distribu- 
 tion of honorary distinctions, upon the occasion of
 
 HOME GOVERNMENT. 87 
 
 the creation of a civil grade of the Order of the 
 Bath, this influence prevailed ; and circumstanced 
 as a Minister of the Crown is, under the British 
 system of Parliamentary Government, it is impos- 
 sible that the desire by preference to favour those 
 who act or think with him, should not prevail. A 
 Whig Minister would nominate only Whigs or 
 Radicals, and a Conservative men of opposite opi- 
 nions. It appears, therefore, impossible to admit 
 nomination by the Crown, that is, of course by the 
 Minister of the day, without reconciling ourselves 
 to such a change of the existing body as must give 
 it a party character, and introduce party strife into 
 its deliberations. 
 
 But the same objection does not hold to allowing 
 the Court or Council to select a portion of their 
 associates. If political feelings have no sway in 
 that Council, they would have no influence on such a 
 selection. This method, therefore, of supplying 
 each alternate, or every third vacancy, requires to 
 be considered on other grounds. The first objec- 
 tion that occurs to it is, that if the nomination of 
 Directors at every alternate, or at any other rotation 
 vacancy, were allowed to the Court itself from a 
 particular class of eligible persons, the rule would 
 of necessity operate to limit the proportion of mem- 
 bers in the whole body from that class ; for none of 
 those eligible for such selection would seek other 
 means of obtaining the seat than were thus consti- 
 tutionally allowed to them ; and if they were to offer 
 themselves as candidates, it would not unnaturally 
 be objected to them, that they were interfering
 
 88 HOME GOVERNMENT. 
 
 with the proportion of members reserved for other 
 classes. Another objection is, that the special class 
 so nominated would stand in the court or council 
 isolated from the general body, and the whole would 
 not act together with the same cordiality and good 
 will, as when all entered by the same gate, and 
 after passing the same ordeal. This feeling might 
 have very prejudicial influence on the vote for the 
 selection of eligible members upon each vacancy, 
 and yet more so in the election to fill the chairs, 
 from which, while in the minority, they might be 
 wrongly excluded, and when commanding the majo- 
 rity they might monopolise the office. Possibly, 
 however, this anticipation of the division of the 
 Court into castes under such a system may be ima- 
 ginary. It is certainly not witnessed in the present 
 Court, although that body contains its proportion of 
 men of the Indian services and of others from the 
 general community, who work well together without 
 jealousy or prejudice of any kind. 
 
 It is not our purpose to discuss at length the 
 forms established between the Court of Directors 
 and the Board of Control for conducting public 
 business. It would seem that the two authorities 
 were perpetually in paper war, until the device was 
 hit upon of a previous consultation between the 
 Chairs and the President of the Board. The tenor 
 of each despatch to India is settled now between 
 the Chiefs before the draft is submitted to any 
 Committee at the India House or to the Court at 
 large, and it is then laid before them as a thing 
 arranged between the two authorities, and not to be
 
 HOME GOVERNMENT. 89 
 
 altered or set aside except for strong reason shown. 
 This process abridges considerably the trouble and 
 the influence of individual directors, not in the 
 chairs, in the initiative decision of questions ; and 
 its discontinuance would not be unacceptable to 
 many in the Court, but it has its convenience, and 
 the matter is not one for settlement by legislation. 
 The whole arrangement may be changed at any 
 time by the resolution of either of the parties who 
 consented to adopt it. What Parliament has to 
 consider is, whether reason sufficient has been 
 shown for altering the constitution of the two 
 bodies, who have hitherto exercised in concert the 
 functions of review and supervision over Indian 
 affairs, and to whose hands the appointment and 
 removal of the governors and members of Council 
 have been heretofore confided. If there be shown 
 good ground of dissatisfaction with the past exercise 
 of these functions, the question would seem to re- 
 solve itself into an inquiry at whose door the errors 
 and short-comings are to be placed ; and let that 
 authority be strengthened, or the contrary, which 
 shall be deemed most or least liable to fall into 
 such errors. The East-India Company have chal- 
 lenged this inquiry ; but that is not the spirit of 
 the agitation \vhich has been set in motion against 
 them, and there is every prospect of this specific 
 inquiry being evaded. 
 
 The Home Government branch of the great sub- 
 ject in hand has been the first entered upon by the 
 Committees of both Houses of Parliament. The rela- 
 tive functions of the Court of Directors and of the
 
 90 HOME GOVERNMENT, 
 
 Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India have 
 been thoroughly examined into and ascertained in all 
 their details, and both Committees have declared 
 a qualified opinion in favour of the system of double 
 review, established under the present scheme of 
 trust-management. Upon this point, therefore, 
 Parliament may be considered to be in a condition 
 to legislate ; notwithstanding that the inquiry has 
 not been carried through the departments of Indian 
 administration, which, if thoroughly examined, will 
 occupy the Committees for several further sessions. 
 Under the supposition that the Court and Board 
 are to be continued essentially as they are, the 
 point upon which there will be the most serious 
 issue joined in the debates in both Houses of Par- 
 liament, is, whether it is right to continue in each 
 authority the right of recall, to be exercised 
 separately, or to provide in lieu, that a recall, like 
 an appointment, shall be the joint act of both 
 authorities in other words, of the Queen's go- 
 vernment only. The evidence taken by the two Par- 
 liamentary Committees is decidedly in favour of 
 the necessity of allowing the Court to retain this 
 power ; and considering the subordinate relation in 
 which the Court stands to the Minister of the 
 Crown, and the prompt remedy afforded to the 
 latter through Parliament in case of abuse, it is 
 difficult to imagine the likelihood of such a power 
 being ever abused in the hands of a body constituted 
 like the Court of Directors.
 
 91 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 m 
 
 LET us now consider how the question stands 
 respecting the machinery of government and of 
 legislation provided locally for India, and how far 
 Parliament is prepared to legislate for this branch of 
 the subject also ; and to decide what modifications 
 are required. 
 
 The Government of India, as established by the 
 Act of 1833, consists of one Governor-General, with 
 a Council of four ordinary members, who have the 
 sole power of making laws for any part of India. To 
 these the Commander-in-Chief may be added, by 
 appointment of the Court of Directors, and he then 
 becomes the second in rank in the Council. The 
 fourth ordinary member is a professional lawyer, 
 appointed from England, who only sits and votes 
 when questions of legislation are under considera- 
 tion. The other three must each have served in 
 some one of the Indian services for twelve years. 
 In practice, one member has usually been a military 
 servant, the other two Bengal civilians. The exe- 
 cutive council for India consists of the same mem- 
 bers, less the fourth or legislative counsellor. 
 
 The material change effected by the Act of 1833, 
 was the relief of this legislative and executive 
 council from any share in the local government of 
 the Bengal Presidency. This authority was vested 
 personally in the Governor-General, subject to the
 
 92 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 same control by the Government of India, as was 
 vested in that Government over the other Presi- 
 dency Governments of Madras, Bombay, and Agra. 
 Bombay and Madras were deprived of their separate 
 legislative functions, and their executive authority 
 was curtailed by the necessity of referring proceed- 
 ings to the Government of India for approval, and by 
 a distinct prohibition to create a new office, or grant 
 a salary, pension, or emolument of any kind without 
 its special sanction. 
 
 To the Council of India was added a subordinate 
 committee to assist in suggesting and framing laws. 
 It was denominated the Law Commission, and was 
 intended to be composed of civil servants from 
 each presidency, assisted by a professional lawyer 
 appointed from England. The special duty of this 
 Law Commission is thus defined in the Act of 1833 : 
 " To inquire into the jurisdiction, powers, and rules 
 of the existing courts of justice and police esta- 
 blishments in the said territories, and all existing 
 forms of judicial procedure, and into the nature and 
 operation of all laws, whether civil or criminal, 
 written or customary, prevailing and in force in any 
 part of the said territories, and whereto any inha- 
 bitants of the said territories, whether Europeans 
 or others, are subject," and to report the result 
 of their inquiries, and to " suggest such alterations 
 as may in their opinion be beneficially made in 
 the said courts of justice and police establish- 
 ments, forms of judicial procedure and laws, due 
 regard being had to the distinction of castes," &c. 
 This committee has ceased to exist since 1845.
 
 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 93 
 
 The services civil, military, marine, and eccle- 
 siastical were left untouched by the Act of 1833. 
 The superintendence of them is in theory vested in 
 the Presidency Governments, but in Bengal they 
 were retained under the Government of India, 
 owing to the difficulty of making a formal separa- 
 tion for the Agra Presidency, and everything con- 
 nected with the army of Bengal has been similarly 
 retained by the Supreme Government. In conse- 
 quence of these and other practical difficulties, the 
 provision of the Act of 1833, for constituting Agra 
 a separate Presidency, was very soon suspended, 
 and power given to the Government of India to 
 appoint a Lieutenant-Governor for that Presidency 
 from among the servants of more than ten years 
 standing. In the first instance, the Court of 
 Directors ordered that one of the members of the 
 Council of India should take this office, and Mr. 
 Alexander Ross and Mr. T. C. Robertson were so 
 appointed ; but, when Lord Ellenborougli was 
 Governor-General, the selection Mas made by him 
 from the general body of civil servants, and first Sir 
 George Clerk, and after him the present Lieutenant- 
 Governor, Mr. Thomason, were appointed succes- 
 sively to that situation. 
 
 The Act of 1833 gave the Governor-General in 
 Council a power of nominating a Deputy-Governor 
 of Bengal, but required this Deputy to be always 
 one of the Council of India. When the Governor- 
 General leaves the seat of Government, the nomi- 
 nation of such a Deputy-Governor is obligatory, and 
 it is in the Governor-General's discretion to appoint
 
 94 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 a Deputy when he is present, but there is this 
 important distinction between the Deputy-Governor 
 of Bengal and the Lieutenant-Governor of Agra, 
 that the former must be of the Council and does 
 not vacate his seat by accepting the situation. The 
 Lieutenant-Governor need not be chosen from this 
 body, and if he be so his place in the Council is 
 filled up. 
 
 When the Governor-General is separate from his 
 Council, the powers he exercises as Governor- 
 General are required to be defined by a legislative 
 Act of the Council of India ; and it has been usual 
 to assign to him the entire powers of the executive 
 Government of India, with exception to such as by 
 a resolution of the Government, recorded before his 
 departure, are specifically reserved to the President 
 in Council. The form has been ingeniously devised 
 to prevent disputes from the collision of the two 
 supreme authorities. It only remains to notice that 
 councils have been continued to the Governors of 
 Madras and Bombay, the number being reduced to 
 two civil members, with the Commander-in-Chief, 
 when specifically appointed. A discretion was given 
 to the Court of Directors, by the Act of 1833, to 
 determine as to the continuance of councils, and 
 the number of members of which they should con- 
 sist. Separate Councils might have been assigned 
 to Bengal and Agra, but were not, and such ad- 
 juncts would scarcely be consistent with their pre- 
 sent subordinate position. 
 
 Such is the machinery provided by the Act of 
 1833, with the amendments and modifications made
 
 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 95 
 
 in the course of the twenty years now closing, for 
 the local government of India, and of the presiden- 
 cies into which it has been divided. Objections have 
 been raised to several parts of the scheme. In the 
 first place, the Government of India, which is both 
 executive and legislative, and contains in the Coun- 
 cil the best-qualified men to advise executively, is 
 debarred, from all interference with the local admi- 
 nistration, even at the seat of government. The 
 Governor-General, on the other hand, who arrives a 
 stranger to administrative duties, has the entire 
 local administration thrust upon him, without any 
 constitutional advisers to assist him. He consults 
 only whom he pleases, and thus wields an authority 
 nearly despotic. There is doubtless an appeal from 
 his acts to the Government of India, which is close 
 at hand ; but appeal from a Governor-General, as 
 Governor of Bengal, to the same Governor-General, 
 in his Council of India, is not a very effective check. 
 It may be called an appeal from Philip drunk to 
 Philip sober ; but it is always an appeal from Philip 
 to Philip, and it is not every Philip that readily 
 acknowledges an antecedent infirmity. Thus the 
 constitution of 1833 has heaped too much power, 
 too much work, and too much responsibility, not on 
 the Government of India, which could not well be 
 overloaded, but on the Governor-General personally, 
 and has reduced the well-paid counsellors to a 
 subordinate and inferior condition, giving them 
 duties less onerous and burthensome than their 
 salaries entitle the country to expect from them. 
 The relation of the Government of India to the
 
 96 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 other presidencies, and especially to Madras and 
 Bombay, as established by the Act of 1833, has 
 also been much objected to. Those Governments 
 complain of the deprivation of legislative powers, 
 and state that the projects of law submitted from 
 their unrepresented presidencies do not meet with 
 an impartial or fair consideration from the Council 
 of India, composed as it is generally of Bengal 
 civilians. The checks upon their power of expend- 
 ing money upon roads and public works without sanc- 
 tion is also an alleged grievance, and it is one that 
 finds an echo in Manchester amongst those who are 
 agitating for a larger development of the resources 
 of India, and who readily therefore take up any 
 allegation of restraint on the application of the pub- 
 lic revenue to purposes calculated to promote that 
 development. 
 
 There have been several propositions submitted 
 for improving the machinery of the supreme and 
 local governments thus provided. First, for the 
 Legislative Council, it has been proposed to extend 
 the number largely by the addition of selected 
 members, either unsalaried, or less liberally salaried 
 than those at present promoted from the covenanted 
 services ; and thus to associate intelligent natives 
 of the country, or any resident Europeans who may 
 have shown talents for legislation, in the manner 
 done in several instances to form Colonial Legis- 
 latures. It has also been proposed, to increase the 
 number of ordinary counsellors of the covenanted 
 class by the addition of a promoted servant from 
 each minor presidency. Mr. Campbell has proposed
 
 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 97 
 
 a widely different scheme. He would convert the 
 secretaries to the Government of India into re- 
 sponsible ministers for their respective departments, 
 and would associate them in a council of govern- 
 ment, in the same manner as the cabinet ministers 
 of England form their council for affairs of more 
 than ordinary moment. 
 
 There are serious objections to every one of these 
 schemes. The association of lay members, not of 
 the covenanted services, would open the door to 
 jobbing and intrigue, and possibly to agitation and 
 faction, to procure the distinction. The selection, 
 if left to the Governor-General, would be made 
 either from personal favour, or with views to 
 strengthen his own power, and assist the carrying 
 of particular measures; and if the lay members 
 were not on equal terms in point of salary and rank 
 with those promoted from the services, that dif- 
 ference would be a source of perpetual jealousy and 
 opposition. Such a council would never act con- 
 sistently for any useful end, and in proportion to its 
 augmented number would always be more difficult 
 of management, and more likely to assert views of 
 independence, and of opposition to the authorities 
 in England ; while, being composed of residents at 
 the seat of government only, its views would be 
 local and exclusive, and it would less meet the 
 wishes of other presidencies and of the general 
 population of India, than the present body, chosen 
 from those who have served in different divisions of 
 the country. 
 
 The association of an additional member from 
 
 H
 
 08 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 each unrepresented presidency is not open to objec- 
 tions of the same description. The expense of such 
 an increase is the most material circumstance, and 
 the suggestion, that to provide for this, one member 
 from the existing councils of Madras and Bombay 
 might be withdrawn, does not meet the difficulty : 
 for a Governor, with a single constitutional adviser, 
 liable to sickness, and always overruled by a casting 
 vote, would possess but the shadow of a council, 
 while the scheme would give to the Governor the 
 power of abusing its name. Again, the covenanted 
 services of the three presidencies are not equal in 
 number Bombay has but 100 working civilians; 
 Madras, 150; while Bengal has 400. Even upon 
 the assumption, therefore, that Bengal were to fur- 
 nish two members to the Supreme Council, one from 
 each of the other presidencies would not be an equal 
 representation; and the selection from so limited a 
 number as they respectively possess, might fail to 
 give the proper average of superior talent, besides 
 exciting jealousy, from a very junior servant often 
 so finding promotion before older and more deserv- 
 ing servants of the larger presidency. 
 
 These are all objections to the scheme of presi- 
 dency representation; and it is, besides, not con- 
 sistent with the principle wisely intended to be 
 introduced by the Act of 1 833, viz. that of opening 
 the Supreme Council to the distinguished of every 
 service. It would evidently tend to confine selec- 
 tion more than at present to the particular class of 
 covenanted civilians. 
 
 The plan of creating a council of executive
 
 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 09 
 
 responsible ministers, by associating the working 
 secretaries of the Supreme Government in consulta- 
 tion, would make those officers too independent of 
 the head of the Government, if holding their offices 
 by appointment from England ; on the other hand, 
 they would be too subservient, if nominated by the 
 Governor-General and removable by him. The 
 difficulty, indeed, of an independent selection for 
 executive combined with legislative duties appears 
 to be insuperable : this scheme, therefore, is not 
 likely to win favour either in England or in India. 
 
 To come back, then, to the original question : 
 Are we to consider four ordinary members, besides 
 the Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief, 
 a proper number for the Legislative Council of 
 India? Does this number secure sufficient deli- 
 berative wisdom and efficiency ? and if so, shall 
 it be composed as at present, or with any and 
 what modifications ? We incline to look upon four 
 selected men, taken from the entire body of cove- 
 nanted Indian servants, as a very efficient Council ; 
 and if two of these be assigned, as at present is 
 done in practice, to the Bengal civil service, the 
 remaining two might be left open to be filled from 
 all classes of either presidency, possessing the 
 requisite qualifications. One is now taken from the 
 English bar and called the Legislative Member. 
 This is a distinction that we see no reason to retain. 
 Every ordinary member of the Council should 
 have equal duties and equal responsibilities. If a 
 lawyer is wanted merely to draw acts and super- 
 intend the wording of legislative proceedings, he 
 
 H 2
 
 100 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 should be an executive officer and not a delibe- 
 rating member. For the Legislative Council, a 
 judge from the Bench of the presidency in which 
 the Council might hold its sittings would be a far 
 better associate, and it would add little to the 
 expense of the Council to place the Chief Justice 
 of Bengal there, with an equalized salary, in like 
 manner as the Commander-in-Chief has his seat at 
 the Board, when at the Presidency. The associa- 
 tion of such a member would add greatly to the 
 prestige of Indian Legislation, and the days are 
 passed when the duties of the Bench in India 
 would be considered incompatible with association 
 in the work of legislation for its populations. The 
 Governments there and the Roval Courts stand 
 
 
 
 now nearly in the same relation to one another as 
 the Government of this United Kingdom and the 
 twelve Judges, of w r hom the chiefs have always 
 their seat in the House of Lords. In the Council 
 of India, the Chief Justice of Bengal would, of 
 course, sit for legislation only. He would take no 
 part in the executive administration of any pre- 
 sidency, and might, like the present Legislative 
 Member, be prohibited from sitting and voting 
 when other business was under consideration. 
 
 Thus the Supreme Government of India would 
 stand thus : The Governor-General, president as 
 now, and with the same power as now of acting on 
 his sole responsibility in any matter of political 
 exigency, under the condition of full record and 
 immediate report. With the same power also of 
 veto upon any legislative act, and of absenting him-
 
 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 101 
 
 self from the Council for any war or other emer- 
 gency requiring his presence. 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief when so appointed by 
 the Home Authorities, and when present at the 
 seat of Government. 
 
 Four ordinary members, each of whom must have 
 served twelve years in some one of the covenanted 
 services, and two of whom must be selected from 
 the Bengal civil service, including, of course, the 
 officers serving under the Lieutenant-Governor of 
 Agra or any other Lieutenant-Governor. 
 
 The Chief Justice of Bengal to be, ex officio, a 
 member of the Legislative Council, and to rank in 
 the Council after the Governor-General and Com- 
 mander-in-Chief. 
 
 A secretary for legislation to be added to the 
 secretariat, who shall be a barrister of not less than 
 ten years' standing; This appointment, if the selec- 
 tion be judiciously made, will go far to supersede 
 the necessity for a Law Commission, and the hope 
 of obtaining it, if practice in India be required for 
 qualification, would give an influence over the Indian 
 bar now a hostile body which it is very desirable 
 that the Government should possess. 
 
 It remains only to consider, whether Calcutta 
 shall be continued as the seat of the Supreme 
 Government. It is hot and disagreeable, and not 
 in the centre of the territory to be governed. These 
 are the only objections urged against it. On the 
 other hand, it is the emporium and only seaport 
 for the trade of the entire Gangetic plain, and must 
 therefore always be the head-quarters of commerce
 
 102 INDIAN GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 and of finance, and the port of principal communi- 
 cation with Europe. The river Indus can never 
 supersede the Ganges in this respect, nor can any 
 system of railroads give equal facilities for the trans- 
 port of merchandise; and until they do so, the 
 rivalry of Bombay, on the ground of greater proxi- 
 mity to England, will be of little avail. By rail- 
 roads and telegraphic lines, moreover, a power of 
 prompt and executive action and control can be 
 obtained and established from any point, and from 
 Calcutta, therefore, as conveniently as from any 
 other ; so that a central position is of inferior im- 
 portance. On the other hand, India has external 
 relations to be maintained and commanded by sea. 
 We have had in the past twenty years a war with 
 China, besides that now waging with Ava; and for 
 these no place can be more convenient for head- 
 quarters than Calcutta. The bulk of the army, indeed, 
 is not in its vicinity, and it is for obvious reasons 
 better that the seat of Supreme Government should 
 be exempted from the inconvenience of an acci- 
 dental military outbreak, or of an army's temporary 
 dissatisfaction with obnoxious measures. 
 
 The sole objection, therefore, to which there is 
 no answer, is the disagreeableness of the climate, 
 which is likely always to be a personal motive with 
 the head of the Government for seeking reasons for 
 absenting himself. The question thus resolves itself 
 into the mere comfort and convenience of the 
 Governor-General ; for the promotion of which it is 
 recommended to found a new city somewhere in 
 nubibus, where he and his council and secretariat
 
 MINOR GOVERNMENTS AND SERVICES. 108 
 
 may reside, like the mythical Jove, with his council 
 of gods, and messengers, and ministerial agents, to 
 control and direct the affairs of the Indian world. 
 The more this proposition to change the seat of 
 Supreme Government is examined, the less will it 
 be found reasonable on any public ground, or pro- 
 ductive of any practical benefit ; and we presume the 
 British Legislature will not on the present occasion 
 listen to the suggestion. Calcutta or, in legal 
 phrase, Fort William in Bengal must therefore 
 continue to be the seat of the Supreme Government 
 of India. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 MINOR GOVERNMENTS AND SERVICES CONCLUSION. 
 
 PROCEED we now to inquire into the proper con- 
 stitution for the presidency Governments. 
 
 Theattempt to divide Bengal into twopresidencies 
 failed, because its army and its civil service and its 
 Supreme Court could not be divided. The failure 
 suggested the appointment, instead, of a Lieutenant- 
 Governor, to whom might, by delegation, be assigned 
 all such powers as could most beneficially be exer- 
 cised locally. The success of this substituted mea- 
 sure has led to the suggestion that a similar scheme 
 of government by delegation might be introduced 
 in Bengal in lieu of the present constitution, which 
 assigns that presidency to the Governor-General, 
 with power to nominate one of his council as 
 Deputy-Governor. The suggestion is well de-
 
 104 MINOR GOVERNMENTS AND SERVICES. 
 
 serving of conskleration, but leaves unsettled the 
 constitution of government to be fixed for tbe 
 Presidency by tbe regulating Act of 1853. 
 
 Tbe rational metbod of carrying out this sugges- 
 tion, and of making provision for tbe permanence 
 of the temporary arrangement, already made for 
 tbe Agra division of Bengal, is to re-annex tbe 
 governments of tbe entire Presidency of Fort Wil- 
 liam, in Bengal, including Agra, tbe Punjab, and 
 all recent conquests to the east, to the Government 
 General of India, that is, to the Governor-General 
 in his Council of India ; giving to that authority a 
 power, by legislative act, to create a Lieutenant- 
 Governor, for any division or part of that Presidency 
 that may be deemed expedient, subject, of course, to 
 approval and confirmation by the authorities in Eng- 
 land, who might also have a voice in the nomination 
 or approval of the Lieutenant-Governor appointed. 
 Under this plan, the military, tbe finance, the service 
 management, and everything connected with the seat 
 of Government and its institutions, would be retained 
 by the Supreme Government, that is to say, by the 
 Governor-General in Council ; and if a Lieutenant- 
 Governor be deemed necessary for Bengal, or for 
 Behar and Benares, such a delegate might be located 
 in the position most convenient for superintendence 
 of the local administration, without interfering with 
 the concerns of the presidency town, and he would 
 always act in such subordination to the superior 
 authority there maintained, as the exigencies of the 
 case might require. A similar Lieutenant-Governor 
 might be appointed for the Punjab, and another
 
 MINOR GOVERNMENTS AND SERVICES. 105 
 
 for Pegue and the Tenasserim Provinces; a third 
 for Singapoor and the Straits settlements, with 
 functions specifically defined and suited to the cir- 
 cumstances of each division of territory ; and the 
 Supreme Government possessing the power of re- 
 vising or modifying each arrangement, would be 
 able to settle every point of difficulty, either ex- 
 ecutively, or by fresh legislation 
 
 It may be laid down, however, as a settled principle, 
 that there ought not to be any intervening authority, 
 that is, no deputy or lieutenant-governor, to intercept 
 the relations of the people, and of the public func- 
 tionaries, with the supreme authority at the imme- 
 diate seat of Government. What would be thought 
 of a proposal to appoint a lord-lieutenant for Eng- 
 land, and to place him in London, to superintend 
 all the affairs which are now concentrated in this 
 great capital, to have a local government so esta- 
 blished, that constitutionally no application could be 
 made to the executive of the Queen, unless it came 
 through that authority ? Complaints of delay, and 
 of the inaccessibility of the supreme, and really 
 governing body, would soon compel the removal of 
 such an intermediary, and yet a Lieutenant-Governor 
 at Calcutta, for the local government of Bengal, 
 would be precisely in that position ; and the fact 
 that the Government of England is Imperial, con- 
 trolling the subordinate governments of Ireland, of 
 Scotland, and of fifty colonies, presents a case analo- 
 gous with the functions of the Supreme Government 
 of India, if that character were deemed a reason for 
 relieving it of the local administration. The neces-
 
 106 MINOR GOVERNMENTS AND SERVICES. 
 
 sity of giving to the supreme executive, local juris- 
 diction, and a direct influence in the local adminis- 
 tration, has been fully recognised in the constitution 
 of the United States of America, where the city of 
 Washington exists as a separate state, administered 
 by the general government of the Union. Why 
 should not the same scheme be adopted in India? 
 The convenience of the public service will be much 
 consulted, by leaving the finance, and the great con- 
 cerns of trade, of education, and of the mints and 
 banks, and monetary system of India, which centre 
 in Calcutta, to be managed by the officers of the 
 Supreme Government, under the direct orders and 
 supervision of the Governor-General and his Coun- 
 cil, in the same manner as they were managed here- 
 tofore. The local public has not been satisfied with 
 the arrangement, under which many of these concerns 
 were transferred to the one secretary for Bengal, to 
 be conducted by him in communication with a 
 Deputy-Governor, often not at all acquainted with 
 such matters. 
 
 We are altogether opposed to the proposition, 
 that a similar plan of appointing Lieu tenant- Go- 
 vernors, should be extended to the presidencies of 
 Madras and Bombay, which, having their separate 
 armies, Supreme Courts, and civil services, stand 
 altogether in a different relation to the Supreme Go- 
 vernment, from the presidency whose Government 
 has been elevated to the higher rank. Those presi- 
 dencies have their separate record, and correspond- 
 ence with the authorities of England, and unless this 
 be withdrawn, and the correspondence with these
 
 MINOR GOVERNMENTS AND SERVICES. 107 
 
 be made to pass entirely through the Government 
 of India, they must continue to exercise the same 
 independent authority over their civil and military 
 servants that they do at present ; and for that pur- 
 pose a council is indispensable. But the claim of 
 those governments to have the power of legislation 
 restored, and to be freed from the control over 
 expenditure, and over the creation of new offices, or 
 the grant of emoluments or pensions, is one that can 
 never be allowed, unless they be governed as separate 
 dependencies of England, and be made altogether 
 independent of the supreme authority, to which the 
 nation looks for the general superintendence of its 
 possessions in India. The claim has been supportd by 
 the evidence of members of council and secretaries of 
 the governments which claim immunity from what 
 they represent as a vexatious and unnecessary control. 
 But the evidence of such witnesses should be received 
 with distrust ; and it behoves the Committees now 
 sitting, to examine to the bottom every case that 
 may be cited or referred to by them, as instances of 
 unnecessary delay, vexation, or wrong refusal of 
 sanction, and to take nothing of the kind for 
 granted. It may perhaps be found that the drafts 
 of laws submitted from those presidencies came up 
 in a condition not fit to be passed, and that much 
 of the legislation that did take place for those 
 presidencies in the course of the past twenty years, 
 either originated with the Government of India 
 and its officers, or was re-cast prior to its being 
 enacted. In like manner, the cases of reference 
 on executive measures may not be found to tell
 
 108 MINOR GOVERNMENTS AND SERVICES. 
 
 favourably for the wisdom of the minor presidencies 
 or for their discretion ; and if they assert that their 
 references have not received a fair consideration, 
 the onus is upon them distinctly to cite instances, 
 and to make out the case by producing the corre- 
 spondence. 
 
 Thus, so far as concerns the governments of 
 -Madras and Bombay, there would not seem to be 
 sufficient reason shown for changing in any re- 
 spect their status or powers relatively either to the 
 Home authorities or to the Government of India. 
 The only point that needs the attention of the 
 Imperial Legislature, is the question, whether ag- 
 grieved servants of these presidencies are to be 
 allowed an appeal to the Government of India, or 
 are to be required, as at present, to make their ap- 
 peal to the Home authorities, to whom all questions 
 concerning their conduct, and the punishment of 
 those who transgress, are now directly referred. 
 For the remainder of the vast and varied posses- 
 sions of the nation, whether of recent or of more 
 ancient acquisition, it will suffice to place them 
 formally under the Government of India along 
 with the presidencies of Bengal and Agra, giving 
 to this authority full power to provide for their 
 government, or for the government of any part of 
 them, by the appointment of a Lieutenant-Governor, 
 with such delegated authority as the council in its 
 wisdom may prescribe. 
 
 With respect to the services now vested with the 
 extensive duties of administration in all depart- 
 ments, Parliament will not, it is presumed, feel
 
 MINOR GOVERNMENTS AND SERVICES. 109 
 
 inclined to make any material organic changes in 
 them. The examinations, as the test of fitness 
 for nomination, the Colleges of Haileybury and 
 Addiscombe, for adding further special instruction 
 of the kind needed, are admirable institutions in 
 principle, though perhaps susceptible of much im- 
 provement. In like manner, the collegiate and 
 other instruction in the languages of the country, 
 which the young men are required to submit to on 
 their arrival in India; and the examinations, by 
 which the acquisition of this and of other know- 
 ledge is enforced, are very fit subjects for inquiry 
 by the Committees sitting, but by no means proper 
 objects for imperial legislation. There is, how- 
 ever, one point on which a specific enactment will 
 be required, and that is for repeal of the existing 
 provisions which require servants compelled to leave 
 the country for sickness contracted in the noxious 
 climate of India, to proceed to the Cape of Good 
 Hope, to Australia, or anywhere but to Europe. 
 Steam has now so shortened the voyage direct to 
 the United Kingdom, that the Cape is no longer a 
 midway station, The rules for furlough and for 
 sick-leave require, therefore, to be adapted to the 
 new state of the communications between the two 
 countries. The details of the rules to be framed 
 cannot be included in any Act of the Imperial 
 Legislature : it will suffice for it to prescribe the 
 limit of absence which shall be deemed to be a 
 vacation of office, and the further limit which shall 
 entail an absolute forfeiture of the service. 
 
 Such being the view which, after much considera-
 
 110 MINOR GOVERNMENTS AND SERVICES. 
 
 tion, has strongly impressed itself on our conviction, 
 as to what Parliament can and ought to do on this 
 occasion, and what it cannot and ought not to 
 interfere with, it results that there can be no good 
 reason why the measures required should not be 
 brought forward and carried through in the present 
 session, so as to make no deviation from the pre- 
 cedent of vigessennial legislation observed in 1793, 
 in 1813, and in 1833. It is mere clamour, for pur- 
 poses of continued agitation, and with ulterior views 
 of unsettling everything, both here and in India, that 
 has raised the plea and pretence, of delaying legisla- 
 tion till every matter opened by the wide field of in- 
 quiry, indicated by the programme of the Committees 
 sitting in both Houses, has been thoroughly sifted. 
 The question each member of the legislature hasto ask 
 himself is, whether he intends and wishes that every 
 branch of Indian government shall be submitted to 
 his individual judgment and understanding, and be 
 regulated by specific acts originating in the chamber 
 where he sits. If not, he must surely see that, let 
 the result of the inquiries that have been or are to 
 be instituted be what it may, the course of policy 
 decided to be best must be carried out by autho- 
 rities in India ; and therefore all he has to do is, 
 to provide such authorities as will be competent 
 effectually to do what may be needed, and to 
 consider the best constitution for those authorities. 
 
 There is no shrinking from inquiry on the part 
 of the India-House, or of the Board of Control, 
 or of the Indian executive and the public servants 
 employed there. All these court, and have all
 
 MINOR GOVERNMENTS AND SERVICES. Ill 
 
 along wanted, the fullest investigation ; and all are 
 looking to the possibility that some new lights may 
 be struck out in the course of the inquiry, of which 
 they may avail themselves for the improvement of 
 admitted errors and defects of the system. Why, 
 however, is the cry for full inquiry only raised just 
 now ? Why did we hear nothing of it till the recent 
 change of Government? If full inquiry were a 
 necessary preliminary to legislation for India, why 
 was it not commenced before Lord John Russell 
 resigned in 1852 ? It was not the interest or the 
 object of any party then to delay the expected 
 measures for renewal of the trust management of 
 this vast empire in the hands to which it had been 
 committed. The motive for asking for delay now is 
 clear : it is for purposes of obstruction and of mischief, 
 and for nothing else, that this course is taken at this 
 particular juncture. It is hoped to unite in a vote 
 for first prosecuting a lengthened inquiry to a con- 
 clusion, members of many parties, who could have 
 no possible agreement upon the votes that would 
 have to be taken, upon the result of such inquiries, 
 nor even as to the reasons for delaying present 
 legislation. What is this but faction of the worst 
 description, such as no good Conservative can sup- 
 port by his vote, or in any way countenance ? 
 
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