On this page
-
Text (2)
-
No. 411, February 6, 1858.] THE LEADER, ...
-
COMPANY RULE IN INDIA. There is as yet n...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Parliamentary Reform And Reformers. The ...
cies , close boroughs , Parliamentary influence in the hands of the Minister , and an increase ! j Joyal prerogative . Lord Campbell would have intellectual and educated constituencies apart from the rest of the electoral community . Mr . Disraeli amusingly solicits attention to a scheme for endowing the landed interest with additional power . Lord Palmerston , however , stands upon the principle that any new Reform Bill must be a concession to the popular principle ; and this , we need scarcely say , is the public opinion on the subject .
To the questions , WTiat ? and Where ? put by the notable writer of What will the Lords do ? may be added a third , Why ? He himself has summarized the answer . " We want better legislation ; we want more effective , responsible , and honest administration . Keform has given us a quarter of a century vastly superior to that which preceded it . We have had slavery abolished , municipal reform , a mitigation of the penal code , an amended Poor-law , the liberation of the Eastern trade , Corn-laws abolished , a beneficial tariff , Church reforms and tithe
settlements , innovations in the pension and sinecure systems , legal reform , free government for the colonies , penny postage , and sanitary measures . Very small talkers ask what a poor man is to do with a vote . Can he eat it ? As if he lived by bread alone ! The individual who would prefer giving the working man a dinner to giving him the suffrage , may be a philanthropist , but he is not a politician . He clearly thinks himself a patrician , and his fellow-citizen a pleb . As clearly is he wrong . His notion is worse than unphilosophical . It is vulgar . The effects of the first Beform Bill have been
felt , and happily felt , in every English home . Every English home would feel the effects of a second . " We have benefited from the measure in a hundred ways , not to be estimated by the exact amount of legislation accomplished . We do not think an unreformed House of Commons would have dealt humanely or wisely with the Irish agitation ; possibly it might have fallen into collision with the French Republic of 1848 ; certainly the Bill of 1832 has improved the character of public men , and blunted the
brazen edge of jobbery . The accelerated action produced by the measure of 1832 has , however , all but ceased . Another impetus is needed . The House of Commons has again to reform itself , and , for the first time , to improve its own methods of transacting business . It has never coped largely with law abuses , public expenditure , official irresponsibility ; but its radical and conspicuous fault is that it does not represent the nation . To the peerage and the landed interest it gives three hundred and
eightythree members ; all the other classes together obtaining only two hundred and seventy-one . The country will be satisfied with no Reform Bill which does not reverse these conditions . Nor will the conditions be fairly reversed in Parliament until such a House of Commons is returned as will prevent the hereditary body from appropriating nearly all the great offices of State , and thrusting their children into the front ranks of all the official
departments . Tlxoy have done this at home ; they aim at doing it in India . The pamphlet 7 flfelTdy ~ F 6 forred ~ t " a analyzes thlTpresWt ~ tfom position of the existing Government , composed of some sixty members holding parliamentary places in the public offices or at Court . Twenty-five offices are held by peers ; twenty by peers' sons , or sons-in-law ; three by gentlemen closely . connected with the peerage . Of the remaining twelve , nine are hnrdworked , subordinate secretaries , with no independent influence or patronage
whatever . Great Britain has three ambassadors —they are peers ; she has eighteen chief diplomacies—twelve of them are held by peers , or their near relations . The three great governorships of India are occupied by peers . Of more than a hundred county lieutenancies scarcely six are enjoyed by commoners . The virtually permanent dignities attached to the Court belong , almost exclusively , to the peerage . In fact , the country has been governed , for forty years , by forty families .
This is the system to be overthrown . We believe that the scheme projected by the united Reformers would go far to complete the work . We trust the public will not be led away by clamorous diversions any more than by sectional propagandism . No serious Liberal is in danger of being misled by Mr . Disraeli ' s territorial hobby , or by the illusion of an Educational Franchise ; but if half the popular pressure is to be applied in favour of a tenancy suffrage and half in favour of ' manhood , ' Government may escape through the gap , and the ' forty family system' will rejoice in the disunion of its enemies .
No. 411, February 6, 1858.] The Leader, ...
No . 411 , February 6 , 1858 . ] THE LEADER , 133
Company Rule In India. There Is As Yet N...
COMPANY RULE IN INDIA . There is as yet no public opinion on Indian subjects . The discussion has only reached its preliminary stage . Nine out of ten , even among educated persons , will not venture to speak in the presence of any one who has lived a year in the East . The matter is in the hands of a few . No doubt information is spreading , and the popular mind is gaining a perception of the points to be kept in view ; but all this is very vague and inconclusive in its results . Since , then , we have no public
opinion , ought Parliament to legislate without further inquiry ? A hundred errors might be pointed out , having reference to India , which are not only popular , but encouraged , by the systematic assailants of the East India " Company ; but a dissection of them may be postponed , it being probable that several months will elapse before the ¦ verdict is given . One grand fallacy , however , is , that British India has been not only neglected , but devastated by the rapacity of the East India Company . On many occasions we have shown the contrary ; but we are now induced to resume the entire argument , and to calculate the product of the
Company ' s rule within the last thirty years . It will be observed that the statement is consistent , in every detail , with all we have hitherto maintained . It is essential to fair discussion that the ground should be cleared of exaggeration and conventional rodomontade , dated from the time of Ejdmunb Burke . The object of those who , on public grounds , are interested in Indian legislation , must be to state the case fairly , and plead for justice between one set of men and another ' . "We do not think that justice has been done to the Company . But it is now perceived that even its most violent assailants have begun
to retreat and leave the way open to a compromise . We should prefer delay ; but if that be impossible , we appeal to the Liberal party not to abandon India , without reserve or check , to the mercies of a Whig
depart" ment . During the few years that have elapsed sirTcTOhlTpow ^ fled in 1853 , some of the most remarkable administrative improvements ever effected in any time or country have been introduced into British India . But we may take the last quarter of a century , and the practical intelligence of Englishmen will at once understand whether such a Government as that of the Eust India Company is immeasurably inferior to that which is likely to be
established under an uncontrolled Vbbnon Smith or an irresponsible CiiANRicarde . To begin with taxation . . The Indian system has its undeniable and salient evils ; but ifc is generally moderate , regular , and equal , which Indian taxation never was at any former period . In Bengal , Baliar , Benares , and some districts of Madras , the Government , under Lord Coritwai / lis , signed away its rights over the soil , and thus created vested interests opposed to any beneficent interference ; but even the perpetual
settlement has been mitigated through the arrangements which check litigation between the ryot and the zemindar , and determine the boundaries of estates . In nearly all parts of the Madras Presidency ryotwary has been established , the incidents of which we have already explained . In the North-West the village settlement has been productive of great advantages to the inhabitants . In the Punjab one of the noblest financial systems ever conceived , has been made the law of the land . The Bombay Presidency has witnessed a far larger success of of
the ryot war principle than the Presidency Madras . The details vary , and the people are more prosperous . In treating of these matters , however , it must be observed that nearly two-thirds of the Indian revenue consisting of land rental , and the Government throughout vast provinces taking less from the occupier and cultivator than in . England would be received from the landlord , the burden is not in itself based upon any objectionable principle . In practice the system has often been oppressive , but the history of Indian finance prevents a constant series of relaxations .
The second source of revenue is opium . This is not a tax , but a trade . Two objections are made , however : firstly , to all monopolies , as such ; secondly , to the encouragement of a demoralizing traffic . The argument refutes itself . Permit the free cultivation of the poppy , and India will be flooded with opium at a low price . The article is sometimes sold at its weight in silver so that the Government can scarcely be said to drug Asia with an obnoxious commodity . As to
salt , it is only a monopoly in the Presidency of Madras , where the monopoly is qualified by several indulgent regulations . Considered as a tax , it is the only one paid by the Indian ryot . In Bombay , there has never been even a Government manufacture of salt , but an excise duty . The Bengal monopoly was abolished in 1836 ; the article was taxed ; importation was permitted , subject , of course , to a duty . In Bengal , this duty amounts to less than three farthings a pound ; in Bombay , to less than one . With respect to tobacco , no monopoly exists ; it is wholly untaxed ; but this fact has been forgotten by many an eloquent and philanthropic
declaimer . Moreover , all inland customs and transit dues , formerly so oppressive , have been abolished , with a large sacrifice of revenue ; most of the local restrictions upon native trade have been swept avyay ; the navigation laws of India were rescinded before those of England ; the trade of the Empire has been thrown open , although many defects remain to be remedied in connexion with Britisli and foreign commercial relations with the ports of the three Presidencies . -1 —A- " lme ~ pr-two-will-illusfcrate—the-postalreforms introduced . One native may write to another across the immense mass of continent , from Cape Comorin to Peshawur , for three farthings .
, , , , The exports of British India have increased from eight to twenty-three millions , or 188 per cent ., within twenty-five years . During the same period the imports haye moreaseU 227 per cent .
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 6, 1858, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_06021858/page/13/
-