Karl Marx 
The Turkish War Question— The New-York Tribune" 

in the House of Commons— The Government of India 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 3824, 20. Juli 1853 

The Turkish War Question— 
The New-York Tribune 
in the House of Commons— 
The Government of India. 

Correspondence of the N.Y.Tribune. 

London, Tuesday, 5th July, 1853. 

The courier bearing the rejection of the Russian ultimatum on the part 
of Reshid Pasha, reached St. Petersburg on the 24th ult., and, three days later, 
a messenger was dispatched with orders for Prince Gorchakoff to cross the 
Pruth, and to occupy the Principalities. 

The Austrian government has sent Count Gyulai on an extraordinary 
mission to the Czar, no doubt with a view of cautioning him against the danger 
of revolution lurking behind any general European war. We may infer the 
answer of the Russian cabinet in the present instance from that which it 
returned to similar representations from the same power in 1829. It was as 
follows:— 

"On this occasion the Austrian Cabinet has reproduced all the motives of 
alarm created by the fermentation which, according to its opinion and the 
information it possesses, reigns in more than one country, as well as the 
progress lately made by the revolutionary tendencies. These apprehensions 
are more particularly betrayed in the letter of the Emperor Francis to Nicho- 

e las. We are far from denying the dangers which Austria points out to us. Since 
by means of foreign influence the resistance of the Porte assumes a character 
of obstinacy which delays beyond our wishes and our hopes the term of this 
crisis, and even demands redoubled efforts and new sacrifices on our part, 
Russia will be forced to devote more than ever her whole attention to inter- 

The Turkish War Question— "The New-York Tribune" in the House of Commons—India 

ests which so immediately affect the honor and the welfare of her subjects; 
from that moment the means which she could oppose to the breaking out 
of the revolutionary spirit in the rest of Europe must necessarily be para- 
lyzed. No power, then, ought to be more interested than Austria in the 
conclusion of peace, but of a peace glorious to the Emperor and advanta- 
geous to his empire. For if the treaty we should sign did not bear this charac- 
ter, the political consideration and influence of Russia would experience 
through it a fatal blow, the prestige of her strength would vanish, and the 
moral support which she might perhaps be called upon to lend in future 
contingencies to friendly and allied powers would be precarious and in- 
efficacious." (Secret dispatch from Count Nesselrode to M. de Tatistcheff, 
dated St. Petersburg, 12th February, 1829.) 

The Press, of last Saturday, stated that the Czar, in his disappointment at 
the conduct of England, and more especially of Lord Aberdeen, had in- 
structed M. de Brunnow to communicate no longer with that "good," old 
man, but to restrict himself to his official intercourse with the Secretary for 
Foreign Affairs. 

The Vienna Lloyd, the organ of the Austrian bankocracy, is very de- 
terminedly in favor of Austria siding with England and France for the 
purpose of discountenancing the aggressive policy of Russia. 

You will remember that the Coalition Ministry suffered a defeat on the 
14th of April, on the occasion of the proposed repeal of the Advertisement 
duty. They have now experienced two more defeats, on the Ist inst., on the 
identical ground. Mr. Gladstone moved on that day to reduce the Advertise- 
ment Duty from Is. 6d. to 6d., and to extend it to advertisements published 
with any magazine, pamphlet, or other literary work. Mr. Milner Gibson's 
amendment for the repeal of all duties now payable on advertisements was 
rejected by 109 against 99 votes. The retainers of Mr. Gladstone thinking that 
victory had been won, left the House for dinner and a court-ball, when Mr. 
Bright rose and made a very powerful speech against the taxes on knowledge 
in general, and the Stamp and Advertisement Duty in particular. From this 
speech I will quote a few passages which may be of interest to you: 

"He (Mr. Bright) held in his hand a newspaper which was the same size 
as the London daily newspapers without a supplement, and it was as good 

35 a newspaper, he undertook to say, as any published in London. It was printed 

with a finer type than any London daily paper. The paper, the material, was 
exceedingly good— quite sufficient for all the purposes of a newspaper. The 
printing could not be possibly surpassed, and it contained more matter for 
its size than any daily paper printed in London. The first, second and third 
sides were composed of advertisements. There were a long article upon the 
American Art-Union investigation, a leading article giving a summary of all 

Karl Marx 

the latest news from Europe, a leading article on the Fisheries dispute, and 
a leading article, with which he entirely concurred, stating that public dinners 
were public nuisances. (Hear, and a laugh.) He had seen articles perhaps 
written with more style but never any that had a better tone, or that were 
more likely to be useful. Then again there were 'Three days later from 
Europe,' the 'Arrival of the Asia,’ and a condensation from all the news from 
Europe. From Great Britain there was an elaborate disquisition upon the 
Budget of the Rt. Honorable gentleman, which did him justice in some parts, 
but not in others, and which, so far as the Manchester schools were con- 
cerned, certainly did them no justice whatever. (Laughter.) Then there were 

an account of Mrs. Stowe's visit to Edinburgh, a long article from The 
London Tunes upon the wrongs of dressmakers, articles from Greece, Spain 
and other continental countries, the Athlone election, and the returns of Her 
Majesty's Solicitor General by exactly 189 votes— which would very much 
surprise an American to read— several columns of ordinary news in para- 

graphs, and most elaborate mercantile and market tables. It wrote steadily 
in favor of Temperance and Anti-Slavery, and he ventured to say thatthere 
was not atthis moment in London a better paper than that. The name of that 
paper was The New-York Tribune, and it was laid regularly every morning 
upon the table of every workingman of that city who chose to buy it atthe 

sum of one penny. (Hear, hear.) What he wanted to ask the Government was 
this: How comes it, and for what good end, and by what contrivance of fiscal 
oppression was it that one of our workmen here should pay 5d. for aLondon 
morning paper, while his direct competitor in New York could buy a paper 
for Id.? We were running a race in the face of all the world with the United 

States; but if our artisans were to be bound either to have no newspaper at 
all, or to pay 5d. for it, or were to be driven to the public houses to read it, 
while the artisan in the United States could procure it for Id., how was it 
possible that any fair rivalry could be maintained between the artisans of 
the two countries? As well say that a merchant in England, if he never saw 

a price-current, would carry on his business with the same facility as the 
merchant who had that advantage every day. (Hear, hear.)... If the Chancel- 
lor of the Exchequer should oppose what he had stated, he should tell him 
at once and without hesitation that it was because he had a latent dread of 

the liberty of the press ; and when the right honorable gentleman spoke about 35 

financial difficulties, he said it was but a cloak to conceal his lurking horror 
lest the people should have a free press and greater means of political in- 
formation. (Hear.) It was the fear that the press would be free which made 
them keep the 6d. advertisement duty as the buttress to the stamp." 

Mr. Craufurd then moved to substitute in lieu of the figure 6d. the cipher 
Od. Mr. Cobden supported the motion, andin reply to Mr. Gladstone's state- 

The Turkish War Question— "The New-York Tribune" in the House of Commons—India 

ment, thatthe Advertisement duty was no question of much importance with 
regard to the circulation of cheap newspapers, called his attention to the 
evidence given by Mr. Horace Greeley, who was examined before the 
Committee which had sat on this subject in 1851. 

"This gentleman was one of the Commissioners of the great exhibition, 
and he was the proprietor of that very newspaper from which his honorable 
friend, Mr. Bright, had quoted. He was examined as to what the effect of 
the advertisement duty would be in America, and his reply was that its 
operation would be to destroy their new papers." 

Lord John Russell now got up and said, in rather angry voice, that it was 
hardly fair to attempt to reverse, in a greatly thinned House, the decisions 
previously adopted. Of course, Lord John did not recollect that on the very 
advertisement-duty his colleagues had been beaten before by a majority of 
40, and had only had now a majority of 10. Notwithstanding Lord John's 
lecture on "constitutional" fairness, the motion of Mr. Gladstone for aduty 
of 6d. on each advertisement, was negatived by 68 against 63, and Mr. 
Craufurd's amendment carried by 70 against 61. Mr. Disraeli and his friends 
voted with the Manchester School. 

The House of Commons, in order to do justice to the colossal dimensions 
of the subject, has been spinning out its Indian debate to an unusual length 
and breadth, although that debate has failed altogether in depth and greatness 
of interest. The division leaving Ministers a majority of 332 against 142, is 
in inverse ratio to the discussion. During the discussion all was thistles for 
the Ministry, and Sir Charles Wood was the ass officially put to the task of 
feeding upon them. In the division allisroses, and Sir Charles Woodreceives 
the crown of another Manu. The same men who negatived the plan of the 
Ministry by their arguments, affirmed it by their votes. None of its supporters 
dared to apologise for the bill itself; on the contrary, all apologized for their 
supporting the bill, the one because it was an infinitesimal part of a measure 
inthe right direction, the others because it was no measure at all. The former 
pretend that they will now mend it in Committee; the latter say that they will 
strip it of all the fancy Reform flowers it parades in. 
The Ministry maintained the field by more than one half of the Tory 
opposition mnning away, and a great portion of the remainder deserting with 
Hemes and Inglis into the Aberdeen camp, while of the 142 opposite votes 
100 belonged to the Disraeli fraction, and 42 to the Manchester School, 
backed by some Irish discontents and some inexpressibles. The opposition 
within the opposition has once more saved the Ministry. 
Mr. Halliday, one of the officials of the East India Company, when exa- 
mined before a Committee of Inquiry, stated: "That the Charter giving a 
twenty years lease to the East India Company was considered by the natives 

Karl Marx 

of India as farming them out." This time at least, the Charter has not been 
renewed for a definite period, but is revokable at will by Parliament. The 
Company, therefore, will come down from the respectable situation of 
hereditary fanners, to the precarious condition of tenants-at-will. This is so 
much gain for the natives. The Coalition Ministry has succeeded in trans- 
forming the Indian Government, like all other questions, into an open ques- 
tion. The House of Commons, on the other hand, has given itself a new 
testimonial of poverty, in confessing by the same division, its impotency for 
legislating, and its unwillingness to delay legislating. 

Since the days of Aristotle the world has been inundated with a frightful 
quantity of dissertations, ingenious or absurd, as it might happen, on that 
question: Who shall be the governing power? But for the first time in the 
annals of history, the Senate of apeople ruling over another people number- 
ing 156 millions of human beings and spreading over a surface of 1,368,113 
square miles, have put their heads together in solemn and public con- 
gregation, in order to answer the irregular question: Who among us is the 
actual governing power over that foreign people of 150 millions of souls? 
There was no (Edipus in the British Senate capable of extricating this riddle. 
The whole debate exclusively twined around it, as although a division took 
place, no definition of the Indian Government was arrived at. 

That there is in India apermanent financial deficit, a regular over-supply 
of wars, and no supply at all of public works, an abominable system of 
taxation, and a no less abominable state of justice and law, that these five 
items constitute, as it were, the five points of the East Indian Charter, was 
settled beyond all doubt in the debates of 1853, as it had been in the debates 
of 1833, and in the debates of 1813, as in all former debates on India. The 
only thing never found out, was the party responsible for all this. 

There exists, unquestionably, a Governor-General of India, holding the 
supreme power, but that Governor is governed in his turn by a home govern- 
ment. Who is that home government? Is it the Indian Minister, disguised 
under the modest title of President of the Board of Control, or is it the 
twenty-four Directors of the East India Company? On the threshold of the 
Indian religion we find a divine trinity, and thus we find a profane trinity 
on the threshold of the Indian Government. 

Leaving, for a while, the Governor-General altogether on one side, the 
question at issue resolves itself into that of the double Government, in which 
form it is familiar to the English mind. The Ministers in their bill, and the 
House in its division, cling to this dualism. 

When the Company of English merchant adventurers, who conquered 
Indiato make money out of it, began to enlarge their factories into an empire, 
when their competition with the Dutch and French private merchants as- 

The Turkish War Question—"The New-York Tribune" in the House of Commons—India 

sumed the character of national rivalry, then, of course, the British Govern- 
ment commenced meddling with the affairs of the East India Company, and 
the double Government of India sprung up in fact if not in name. Pitt's act 
of 1784, by entering into a compromise with the Company, by subjecting it 
to the superintendence of the Board of Control, and by making the Board 
of Control an appendage to the Ministry, accepted, regulated and settled that 
double Government, arisen from circumstances, in name as well as in fact. 

The act of 1833 strengthened the Board of Control, changed the proprietors 
of the East India Company into mere mortgagees of the East India revenues, 

ordered the Company to sell off its stock, dissolved its commercial existence,, 
transformed it, as far as it existed politically, into a mere trustee of the 
Crown, and did thus with the East India Company, what the Company had 
been in the habit of doing with the East India Princes. After having super- 
seded them, it continued, for a while, still to govern in their name. So far, 
the East India Company has, since 1833, no longer existed but in name and 
on sufferance. While thus on one hand, there seems to be no difficulty in 
getting rid ofthe Company altogether, it is, onthe other hand, very indifferent 
whether the English nation rules over India under the personal name of 
Queen Victoria, or under the traditional firm of an anonymous society. The 
whole question, therefore, appears to turn about a technicality of very 
questionable importance. Still, the thing is not quite so plain. 

It is to be remarked, in the first instance, that the Ministerial Board of 
Control, residing in Cannon-row, is as much a fiction as the East India 
Company, supposed to reside in Leadenhall-st. The members composing the 
Board of Control are a mere cloak for the supreme rule of the President of 
the Board. The President is himself but a subordinate though independent 
member of the Imperial Ministry. In India it seems to be assumed that if a 
man is fit for nothing it is best to make him a Judge, and get rid of him. In 
Great Britain, when a party comes into office and finds itself encumbered 
with a tenth-rate "statesman," it is considered best to make him President 
of the Board of Control, successor of the Great Mogul, and in that way to 
get rid of him— teste Carolo Wood. 

The letter of the law entrusts the Board of Control, which is but another 
name for its President, with "full power and authority to superintend, direct, 
and control all acts, operations and concerns of the East India Company 
which in anywise relate to or concern the Government or revenues of the 
Indian territories." Directors are prohibited "from issuing any orders, in- 
structions, dispatches, official letters, or communications whatever relating 
to India, or to the Government thereof, until the same shall have been sanc- 
tioned by the Board." Directors are ordered to "prepare instructions or 
orders upon any subject whatever at fourteen days’ notice from the Board, 

Karl Marx 

or else to transmit the orders of the Board on the subject of India. " The Board 
is authorized to inspect all correspondence and dispatches to and from India, 
and the proceedings of the Courts of Proprietors and Directors. Lastly, the 
Court of Directors has to appoint a Secret Committee, consisting of their 
Chairman, their Deputy Chairman and their senior member, who are sworn 
to secrecy, and through whom, in all political and military matters, the 
President of the Board may transmit his personal orders to India, while the 
Committee acts as a mere channel of his communications. The orders re- 
specting the Affghan and Burmese wars, and as to the occupation of Scinde 
were transmitted through this secret Committee, without the Court of Direc- 
tors being any more informed of them than the general public or Parliament. 
So far, therefore, the President of the Board of Control would appear to be 
the real Mogul, and, under all circumstances, he retains an unlimited power 
for doing mischief, as, for instance, for causing the most ruinous wars, all 
the while being hidden under the name of the irresponsible Court of Direc- 
tors. On the other hand, the Court of Directors is not without real power. 
As they generally exercise the initiative in administrative measures, as they 
form, when compared with the Board of Control, a more permanent and 
steady body, with traditional rules for action and a certain knowledge of 
details, the whole of the ordinary internal administration necessarily falls to 
their share. They appoint, too, under sanction of the Crown, the Supreme 
Government of India, the Governor-General and his Councils; possessing, 
besides, the unrestricted power to recall the highest servants, and even the 
Governor-General, as they did under Sir Robert Peel, with Lord Ellen- 
borough. But this is still not their most important privilege. Receiving only 
£300 per annum, they are really paid in patronage, distributing all the writer- 
ships and cadetships, from whose number the Governor-General of India and 
the Provincial Governors are obliged to fill up all the higher places withheld 
from the natives. When the number of appointments for the year is ascer- 
tained, the whole are divided into 28 equal parts-of which two are allotted 
to the Chairman and Deputy Chairman, two to the President of the Board 
of Control, and one to each of the Directors. The annual value of each share 
of patronage seldom falls short of £14,000. "All nominations," says Mr. 
Campbell, "are now, as it were, the private property of individuals, being 
divided among the Directors, and each disposing of his share as he thinks 
fit." Now, it is evident that the spirit of the Court of Directors must pervade 
the whole of the Indian Upper Administration, trained, as it is, at schools 
of Addiscombe and Haileybury, and appointed, as it is, by their patronage. 
It is no less evident that this Court of Directors, who have to distribute, year 
after year, appointments of the value of nearly £400,000 among the upper 
classes of Great Britain, will find little or no check from the public opinion 

The Turkish War Question— "The New-York Tribune" in the House of Commons—India 

directed by those very classes. What the spirit of the Court of Directors is, 
I will show in a following letter on the actual state of India. For the present 
it may suffice to say that Mr. Macaulay, inthe course ofthe pending debates, 
defended the Court by the particular plea, that it was impotent to effect all 
the evils it mightintend, so much so, thatall improvementshadbeen effected 
in opposition to it, and against it by individual Governors who had acted on 
their own responsibility. Thus with regard to the suppression of the Suttee, 
the abolition of the abominable transit duties, and the emancipation of the 
East India press. 

The President of the Board of Control accordingly involves India in ruin- 
ous wars under cover of the Court of Directors, while the Court of Directors 
corrupt the Indian Administration under the cloak of the Board of Control. 

On looking deeper into the framework of this anomalous government we 
find at its bottom a third power, more supreme than either the Board or the 

15 Court, more irresponsible, and more concealed from and guarded against the 

superintendence of public opinion. The transient President of the Board 
depends on the permanent clerks of his establishment in Cannon-row, and 
for those clerks India exists not in India, but in Leadenhall-st. Now, who 
is the master at Leadenhall-st.? 

Two thousand persons, elderly ladies and valetudinarian gentlemen, pos- 
sessing Indian stock, having no other interest in India except to be paid their 
dividends out of Indian revenue, elect twenty-four Directors, whose only 
qualification is the holding of £1,000 stock. Merchants, bankers and directors 
of companies incur great trouble in order to get into the Court for the interest 

25 of their private concerns. "A banker," said Mr. Bright, "in the City of London 

commands 300 votes of the East India Company, whose word for the election 
of Directors is almost absolute law." Hence the Court of Directors is nothing 
but a succursal to the English moneyocracy. The so-elected Court forms, 
in its turn, besides the above-mentioned Secret Committee, three other 
Committees, which are 1. Political and Military. 2. Finance and Home. 3. 
Revenue, Judicial and Legislative. These Committees are every year ap- 
pointed by rotation, so that a financier is one year on the Judicial and the 
next year on the Military Committee, and no one has any chance of a con- 
tinued supervision over a particular department. The mode of election having 
brought in men utterly unfit for their duties, the system of rotation gives to 
whatever fitness they might perchance retain, the final blow. Who, then, 
govern in fact under the name of the Direction? A large staff of irresponsible 
secretaries, examiners and clerks at the India House, of whom, as Mr. 
Campbell observes, in his Scheme for the Government of India, only one 
individual has ever been in India, and he only by accident. Apart from the 
trade in patronage, it is therefore a mere fiction to speak of the politics, the 

Karl Marx 

principles, and the system of the Court of Directors. The real Court of 
Directors and the real Home Government, etc., of India are the permanent 
and irresponsible bureaucracy, "the creatures of the desk and the creatures 
of favor" residing in Leadenhall-st. We have thus a Corporation ruling over 
an immense Empire, not formed, as in Venice, by eminent patricians, but 
by old obstinate clerks, and the like odd fellows. 

No wonder, then, that there exists no government by which so much is 
written and so Utile done, as the Government of India. When the East India 
Company was only a commercial association, they, of course, requested a 
most detailed report on every item from the managers oftheir Indian facto- 
ries, as is done by every trading concern. When the factories grew into an 
Empire, the commercial items into ship loads of correspondence and docu- 
ments, the Leadenhall clerks went on in their system, which made the 
Directors and the Board their dependents; and they succeeded in trans- 
forming the Indian government into one immense writing machine. Lord 
Broughton stated in his evidence before the Official Salaries Committee, that 
with one single dispatch 45,000 pages of collection were sent. 

In order to give you some idea of the time-killing manner in which business 
is transacted at the India-House, I will quote a passage from Mr. Dickin- 
son: 

"When a dispatch arrives from India, it is referred, in the first instance, 
to the Examiners' Department, to which it belongs; after which the chairs 
confer with the official in charge of that department, and settle with him the 
tenor of areply, and transmit a draught of this reply to the Indian Minister, 
in what is technically called P.C., i.e. previous communication. The chairs, 
in this preliminary state of P.C. depend mainly on the clerks. Such is this 
dependence that even in a discussion in the Court of Proprietors, after 
previous notice, itis pitiable to see the chairman referring to a secretary who 
sits by his side, and keeps on whispering and prompting and chaffing him 
as if he were a mere puppet, and the Minister at the other end of the system 
is in the same predicament. In this stage of P.C., if there is a difference of 
opinion on the draught, it is discussed, and almost invariably settled in 
friendly communication between the Minister and the Chair; finally the 
draught is returned by the Minister, either adopted or altered; and then it 
is submitted to the Committee of Directors superintending the department 
to which it belongs, with all papers bearing on the case, to be considered and 
discussed and adopted or altered, and afterward it is exposed to the same 
process in the aggregate Court, and then goes, for the first time, as an official 
communication to the Minister, after which it undergoes the same process 
in the opposite direction." 

"When a measure is discussed in India," says Mr. Campbell, "the an- 

The Turkish War Question— "The New-York Tribune" in the House of Commons—India 

nouncement that it has been referred to the Court of Directors, is regarded 
as an indefinite postponement." 

The close and abject spirit of this bureaucracy deserves to be stigmatised 
in the celebrated words of Burke: 

"This tribe of vulgar politicians are the lowest of our species. There is no 
trade so vile and mechanical as Government in their hands. Virtue is not then- 
habit. They are out of themselves in any course of conduct recommended 
only by conscience and glory. A large, liberal and prospective view of the 
interests of States passes with them for romance; and the principles that 

recommend it, for the wanderings of a disordered imagination. The calcula- 
tors compute them out of their senses. The jesters and buffoons shame them 
out of everything grand and elevated. Littleness in object and in means to 
them appears soundness and sobriety." 

The clerical establishments of Leadenhall-st. and Cannon-row cost the 
Indian people the trifle of £160,000 annually. The oligarchy involves India 
in wars, in order to find employment for their younger sons ; the moneyocracy 
consigns it to the highest bidder; and a subordinate Bureaucracy paralyse 
its administration and perpetuate its abuses as the vital condition of their own 
perpetuation. 

Sir Charles Wood's bill alters nothing in the existing system. It enlarges 
the power of the Ministry, without adding to its responsibility. 

Karl Marx.