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be not gradually effected . The mere possibility of their resort to Parliament will do one-half the work , if only they show , that to do the other half they will , if pushed to it , really use that resort . But then they must show intelligence iq their suggestions , as well as energy , efficiency , and trustworthiness in so much of public business as may fall into their hands . These not failing ( and here is the chief risk ) , their future progress will be pretty much what they themselves may make it , by the quiet and gradual application of constitutional
means . That , however , on which we are most disposed to rely for the effecting of reforms , is the annual statement of the Indian Minister in Parliament , which , however , is only promised by the Minister and is not to be found in the Bill . But to be of sufficient value , this provision needs improvement . As proposed , it seems to be only the revival of a practice which was dropped for its inconvenience in official quarters . It needs to be rendered obligatory , and to have the weight derived from some practical consequence of its sufficient fulfilment ; or else it may either be dropped again , or be rendered useless by some of the common devices of party .
On this as on many other Indian subjects , our own early constitutional progress indicates a principle applicable to the case . Our forefathers insisted on the redress of grievances , before they granted money ; and they thus worked out the several steps of our own freedom . Let , then , some part of the Indian expenditure , say all the salaries payable in England , and those of the imperial representatives and nominees in India , be payable by the British Treasury , out of funds supplied to it by India , and on an appropriation bill to be annually passed bv Parliament .
Two parties will probably soon feel the need of such a security . The people of India will require it , as a guarantee for sufficient attention to their interests , just as our ancestors needed it for theirs . So long as the Court of Directors was a body independent of the Crown , those interests had some sort of advocacy ; and , however insufficient and imperfect it might be , its necessity and value were made apparent , by the fact that
the measures most injurious to India , in late times , have been just those which the Ministers of the Crown had the power of imposing , either without the knowledge of the Directors , or against their expressed dissent . If this shield , however defective , be taken away , it will be absolutely necessary to interpose some other check to the power of the Ministry in Indian affairs , just to the same purpose , and for the same reasons , as in British and imperial affairs .
To justify such a modification of the proposed plan , it is not necessary to represent the Indian Minister as an ogre , ever on the watch to devour the happiness of the East . Wo have only to remember , that , notwithstanding all our advantages of being on the spot whero the government is carried on , of the possession of established constitutional usages , of the exercise of well understood rights , and of identity of the personal
interest of the Minister and his friends with that of the people at large , we have ever felt the necessity of constitutional safeguards for ourselves , against the errors and infirmities of power . Of those safeguards , one of the greatest , in its time , was that which we now propose to apply , under very similar circumstances , to tho affairs of India ; and , in those affairs , tho absence of all our own special advantages of other kinds , renders the importance of this safeguard vastly greater than in
our own case . But the East India Directors , not nominated by tho Crown , will probably need it , as much as the people of India . With one office entirely composed of Crown servants , and with one-third of nominated members in tho other , it is obvious that the Minister will have a predominance , to which no strength of conviction , or energy of remonstrance , on t he part of tho twelve ducted Diroctors , ciin supply any cheek . So long as Indian , affairs could bo confined to n distinct official hvhtem , soparnto from tho general regime of the Empire , in which most things could ho " made pleasant , " without much sacrifice oitbor of private feeling or public
coiwidomtioii , tho supremacy of tho Hoard of Control might ho tempered to considerable ) effect , by tho Court of D irector * , or , ut worst , endured with more or leas of wincing . But when tho imperial authorities shall have corno bo largely into Indiiin administration , as is now proposed and tho imperial nominees shall bo ahlo to curry everything before them , one of two tilings cau hardly fni * l , —oithor tlie elected Directors will quietly » iuk to a rank confusedly »»«* very much below that of their nominated colleagues , or they mint H « ok still further admittance into tho general Bystem of imperial , „!„ , by clai ming the protection of Parliament , and that protection "till rests , practically , on tho old constitutional device of tho Appropriation Act . On the vexed question of tho " double government ,
we ofier , just now , but one remark . We cannot forbear to wonder that the ardent reformers who advocate the merging of the Court of Directors in a Government office , do not see that they are throwing away an opportunity of the highest value , for establishing a popular Indian constituency in England , through improvements in the constitution of the East India Company . It is not , however , the first case , by many , nor the only one now existing , in which the impetuous supporters or opponents of political forms or devices , which happen
to have engaged their attention , or to have stood in their way , forget and damage the principles on which the less immediate but more real objects of their zeal essentially depend . But if the India Reformers neglect or avoid a popular basis in this country for the Indian , government , in favour of unaided parliamentary responsibility , then are they doubly bound to make that responsibility real , and not to leave it , as experience shews it to have been in Indian affairs , as great " a sham" as ever the double government was represented to be .
This great subject will require an early return to it , with such fresh lights as the movements of parties may afford .
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"A STRANGER" IN PARLIAMENT . " Pooh—pooh ! why should I give way ? Want to go home early ? Of course he does . So do I ; and I'm twenty years older . " Mr . Hume thus expressed himself at about six yesterday evening , in reply to the countless applications made to him to let Mr . Macaulay speak first . Mr . Hume had adjourned the debate from Thursday : and Mr . Hume had got the right to have the House first ; and Mr . Hume is an obstinate man , who cannot perceive the advantage of following Mr . Macaulay in a grand debate . Mr . Canning said that Mr . Hume was " an extraordinary ordinary man ; " and
in no respect is his commonplace more marvellous than in the belief that public speaking is his forte . The House doesn't agree with him ; and as his infelicitous firmness was bruited about he became very unpopular . Great crowds were down about the House awaiting Macaulay , and they Oh—oh'd , and cried , " Macaulay , Macaulay ! " when Mr . Hume got up ; but it was of no use—Mr . Hume floundered sedately and contentedly into medias res ; and the House emptied spitefully , and did not return in great numbers , for there was no longer a certainty about the great member for Edinburgh , and at least it was hoped he would
be mute till dinner was over . But he wouldn't ; he waited patiently on Mr . Hume , and followed , in a not crowded but respectfully eager House , with a speech which was undoubtedly excellent from its point of view , but has disappointed the expectation of every one but Ministers . He delighted Ministers and dissatisfied everybody else . Broken down in health , uncontrollably nervous , and unable to sustain the pitch of his voice , we are hardly to look now for those vividly brilliant . Macaulay orations , to hear which was a grand intellectual luxury ; and certainly not , when the orator happens to bo on tho unpopular side , defending a bill ,
generally scouted , for no more precise reason , it is probable , than that he is tho editor of it . Still it was a fine defence , abounding in suggestions , and rich in the resources of informing illustration : but it was not Macaulayish , —it was cold , tamo , aud rather businesslike , and reminding of the old style , or of the stylo in which he spoke three weeks ago on Lord Hotham ' a Exclusion of Judges' Bill , only hero and there , as in the hearty scholarly vindication of academical distinctions , and in tho review-liko assault on Lord Ellonhorough . Cheered at such passages ho was warmly and delightedly ; but , for tho most part , his speech did
not tell , and tho impression ho produced wiw that ho had missed the groat occasion to stamp his name on Indian legislation out of more personal considerations for tho comfort of bureaucratic Whigs and tho currypowdor classes . Tho great effect was frigidly talked about and cruelly criticised ; und tho conclusion to which observation led , was that Mr . Macaulay , for tho first time in h ' m life , had not modo a hit whero ho hud aimed . That event gavo a dull tono to tho evening ; members wont off dissatisfied to Hinoke ; mild Mr . Blackett , who next wont in to win , and did , ( with the members of the Indian Reform Association ); jaunty Lord and
Tocelyn ( trying to got back among tho Poolites on tho way to an Indian Presidency , —for which ho prepares himself by copious blue hooks—that being his view of a s tatesman ' . ! education ) : objectless Mr . Otway ( who was rotumlly inconclusive ); ardent Mr . Adderloy ( who thought that ho had a good right to speak about India , weing that the Cape is hall-way ); and maundering Mr . Munglcs ( who announced that ho was breaking for tho first time the silence of twolvo yea ™ , and induced a rflgret at his precipitancy );—all spoke , in due succession of Orderly dulncss , to a thinner House than would bp got on ft great railway bill . It wan
mortifying ; but what was to be expected ? Two of these gentlemen were showing , in elaborate essays , in which they solemnly dogmatized , that Parliament ought not to legislate , because Parliament was ignorant of the question ; and the two others , the possible Indian President , and the actual Director , were arguing that Parliament was not ignorant , and proved their case by declaring that "the hon . gentlemen below the gangway " ( meaning the Indian Reform Society ' s members ) were in the crassest unconsciousness of what they had been
talking about . The House could not find enjoyment in the dissertations of theorists or the simulations of " practical" men , who look on the 150 , 000 , 000 merely as men who are to be governed , or as men who are machines for the contribution of revenue ; and by the time Mr . Mangles had compensated for his prolonged and commendable taciturnity by the most terrible reaction remembered by Mr . Shaw Lefevre , it was one in the morning , and the debate had to be adjournedmost of the potent personages having yet to declare themselves .
Likewise on Thursday , when it was known early that Macaulay would not speak till yesterday , and then the first thing , and when , consequently , all the other pretentious orators made up their minds , like discreet men , not to anticipate a person who was going to speak to posterity , and would therefore have it in his power to hand down those whom he attacked to eternal contempt , there -were all the indications of the correctness of the theory advanced here some weeks ago—viz ., that there is in England profound public indifference to Indian affairs , and that , but for the opportunity which they might offer for party devices , Ministers , whether
with a good or a bad bill , would have carte blanche to deal with the dusky 150 , 000 , 000 just as the Yorkshire squire , Sir Charles , who is ruler over them , might happen to like . Last night there was at first a good House , because there were great speakers expected . On Thursday there were not 100 members present at any period of the debate , because second rate , or at least second class men , were to be competing for the Speaker ' s eye . The House , like the country , doesn't care what anybody thinks or has to say about India ; the interest is merely in what certain men are going to do in a party
emergency ; and in June it is no doubt difficult to sustain the sense of sacred duty to the 150 , 000 , 000 , who are , to us distant Saxons , an abstract race—an unknown quantity in a political sum . Besides , on Thursday , members hadn't made up their minds ; and when a member hasn't made up his mind in a party crisis , he keeps out of the House , for he doesn't know whom to cheer , and he does know that Hayter , and Bateson , and Lord H . Lennox , never take their eyes from him , and he is then too uncomfortable to understand the arguments ; so he waits about the lobby and the library , and hopes to s ee who is likely to win ; when he comes
to an abrupt and chivalrous conclusion about the 150 , 000 , 000 . There was much to chat about both nights in the lobby and in the library , in the dining room and in the smoking room ; and amid tho variety of rumours and of prophecies , men had much anxiety to pump us much and say as little as possible ; for in an era like this week , the great art of your member of Parliament is to shake his head , with the duo vagueness , and not to commit himself , with the duo emphasis . The perplexity was common to all parties . Steady Ministerialists were afraid of Ministers , and avoided Hayter ; Radicals had to affect to believe they might follow
Brig ht without offence to Russell ; or , on tho other hand , to seem to think that they would be betraying liberalism to vote with t ho Tories whoa' they were right ; and the latter class wont about , saying solemnly , " I ' ve never played tho Tory game , and 1 never will : " that is so enlightened in independent members ! And tho Tories were on thorns , for they are at last perceiving that Mr . Disraeli is splitting them up into twp camps , and they were not certain—tho meeting at Lord Derby ' s not having boon quite successful—whether they ought not to go into tho country , und so got out of tho dilemma in which they were p laced between young Stanley ami old Horries . Inglis is always nearer
Russell than Disraeli now : his orthodoxy has boon alarmed for soino time ; thut terrible chapter in tho Bentinck biography , which adjured Sir Robert Inglis to bo grateful to tho Jowu because they effected the crucifixion ! and his spiteful speech—tho idea of being led by a young follow of twenty-six—nlwurd ! —did not make much impression . But Herries did : that is what wan heard , for tho old gentleman has a fuoulty fo talking confidentially with the clerk at tho table , at inakos no exciting displays ; and , no doubt , it wat question , after that tttutommn ' tj Himb of the aapii Stanley , whether tho decorous Tories ou ght to ridicule on their party by voting on an Indian in tho teeth of the man whom , when they w power , they made President of tho Board of '
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June 25 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER , . 615
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 25, 1853, page 615, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1992/page/15/
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