The latest India bill has passed through its third reading in the 
House of Commons,’ and since the Lords swayed by Derby’s 
influence, are not likely to show fight, the doom of the East India 
Company appears to be sealed. They do not die like heroes, it 
must be confessed; but they have bartered away their power, as 
they crept into it, bit by bit, in a business-like way. In fact, their 
whole history is one of buying and selling. They commenced by 
buying sovereignty, and they have ended by selling it. They have 
fallen, not in a pitched battle, but under the hammer of the 
auctioneer, into the hands of the highest bidder. In 1693 they 
procured from the Crown a charter for twenty-one years by 
paying large sums to the Duke of Leeds and other public officers. 
In 1767 they prolonged their tenure of power for two years by the 
promise of annually paying £400,000 into the Imperial exchequer. 
In 1769 they struck a similar bargain for five years; but soon after, 
in return for the Exchequer’s foregoing the stipulated annual 
payment and lending them £1,400,000 at 4 per cent, they 
alienated some parcels of sovereignty, leaving to Parliament in the 
first instance the nomination of the Governor-General and four 
Councilors, altogether surrendering to the Crown the appointment 
of the Lord Chief Justice and his three Judges, and agreeing to 
the conversion of the Court of Proprietors from a democratic into 
an oligarchic body.’ In 1858, after having solemnly pledged 
themselves to the Court of Proprietors to resist by all constitutional 
“means” the transfer to the Crown of the governing powers of the 

a See The Times, No. 23036, July 3, 1858.— Ed. 

East India Company,’ they have accepted that principle, and 
agreed to a bill penal as regards the Company, but securing 
emolument and place to its principal Directors. If the death of a 
hero, as Schiller says, resembles the setting of the sun,” the exit of 
the East India Company bears more likeness to the compromise 
effected by a bankrupt with his creditors. 

By this bill the principal functions of administration are 
intrusted to a Secretary of State in Council,°” just as at Calcutta 
the Governor-General in Council manages affairs. But both these 
functionaries—the Secretary of State in England and the Gover- 
nor-General in India—are alike authorized to disregard the advice 
of their assessors and to act upon their own judgment. The new 
bill also invests the Secretary of State with all the powers at 
present exercised by the President of the Board of Control, 
through the agency of the Secret Committee—the power, that 1s, 
in urgent cases, of dispatching orders to India without stopping to 
ask the advice of his Council. In constituting that Council it has 
been found necessary, after all, to resort to the East India 
Company as the only practicable source of appointments to it 
other than ncminations by the Crown. The elective members of 
the Council are to be elected by the Directors of the East India 
Company from among their own number. 

Thus, after all, the name of the East India Company is to out- 
live its substance. At the last hour it was confessed by the Derby 
Cabinet that their bill contains no clause abolishing the East India 
Company, as represented by a Court of Directors, but that it 
becomes reduced to its ancient character of a company of 
stockholders, distributing the dividends guaranteed by different 
acts of legislation. Pitt’s bill of 1784 virtually subjected their 
government to the sway of the Cabinet under the name of the 
Board of Control. The act of 1813 stripped them of their 
monopoly of commerce, save the trade with China. The act of 
1834 destroyed their commercial character altogether, and the act 
of 1854 annihilated their last remnant of power, still leaving them 
in possession of the Indian administration. By the rotation of 
history the East India Company, converted in 1612 into a 
joint-stock company, is again clothed in its primitive garb, only 
that it represents now a trading partnership without trade, and a 

4 The Times, No. 22896, January 21, 1858.— Ed. 

b Schiller, Die Rauber, Act III, Scene I.— Ed. 

©“ H. Cairns’ speech in the House of Commons on July 8, 1858, The Times, 
No. 23041, July 9, 1858.— Ed. 

The Indian Bill 587 

joint-stock company which has no funds to administer, but only 
fixed dividends to draw. 

The history of the Indian bill is marked by greater dramatic 
changes than any other act of modern Parliamentary legislation. 
When the Sepoy insurrection broke out, the cry of Indian reform 
rang through all classes of British society. Popular imagination was 
heated by the torture reports; the Government interference with 
the native religion was loudly denounced by Indian general 
officers and civilians of high standing; the rapacious annexation 
policy of Lord Dalhousie, the mere tool of Downing street; the 
fermentation recklessly created in the Asiatic mind by the piratical 
wars in Persia and China—wars commenced and pursued on 
Palmerston’s private dictation—the weak measures with. which he 
met the outbreak, sailing ships being chosen for transport in 
preference to steam vessels, and the circuitous navigation around 
the cape of Good Hope instead of trasportation over the Isthmus 
of Suez—all these accumulated grievances burst into the cry for 
Indian Reform—reform of the Company’s Indian administration, 
reform of the Government's Indian policy. Palmerston caught at 
the popular cry, but resolved upon turning it to his exclusive 
profit. Because both the Government and the Company had 
miserably broken down, the Company was to be killed in sacrifice, 
and the Government to be rendered omnipotent. The power of 
the Company was to be simply transferred to the dictator of the 
day, pretending to represent the Crown as against the Parliament, 
and to represent Parliament as against the Crown, thus absorbing 
the privileges of the one and the other in his single person. With | 
the Indian army at his back, the Indian treasury at his command, 
and the Indian patronage in his pocket, Palmerston’s position 
would have become impregnable. 

His bill passed triumphantly through the first reading, but his 
career was cut short by the famous Conspiracy bill,” followed by 
the advent of the Tories to power. 

On the very first day of their official reappearance on the 
Treasury benches, they declared that, out of deference for the 
decisive will of the Commons, they would forsake their opposition 
to the transfer from the Company to the Crown of the Indian 
Government.’ Lord Ellenborough’s legislative abortion seemed to 
hasten Palmerston’s restoration, when Lord John Russell, in order 
to force the dictator into a compromise, stepped in, and saved the 

4 FE. G. Derby’s speech in the House of Lords on March 1, 1858, The Times, 
No. 22930, March 2, 1858.— Ed. 

Government by proposing to proceed with the Indian bill by way 
of Parliamentary resolution, instead of by a governmental bill.* 
Then Lord Ellenborough’s Oude dispatch, his sudden resignation, 
and the consequent disorganization in the Ministerial camp, were 
eagerly seized upon by Palmerston. The Tories were again to be 
planted in the cold shade of opposition, after they had employed 
their short lease of power in breaking down the opposition of 
their own party against the confiscation of the East India 
Company. Yet it is sufficiently known how these fine calculations 
were baffled. Instead of rising on the ruins of the East India 
Company, Palmerston has been buried beneath them. During the 
whole of the Indian debates, the House seemed to indulge the 
peculiar satisfaction of humiliating the Civis Romanus.’ All his 
amendments, great and small, were ignominiously lost; allusions of 
the most unsavory kind, relating to the Afghan war,°” the Persian 
war,’’”° and the Chinese war,”’’ were continually flung at his head; 
and Mr. Gladstone’s clause, withdrawing from the Indian Minister 
the power of originating wars beyond the boundaries of India,” 
intended as a general vote of censure on Palmerston’s past foreign 
policy, was passed by a crushing majority, despite his furious 
resistance. But although the man has been thrown overboard, his 
principle, upon the whole, has been accepted. Although somewhat 
checked by the obstructive attributes of the Board of Council, 
which, in fact, is but the well-paid specter of the old Court of 
Directors, the power of the executive has, by the formal 
annexation of India, been raised to such a degree that, to 
counterpoise it, democratic weight must be thrown into the 
Parliamentary scale. 

Written on July 9, 1858 Reproduced from the New-York 
% Daily Tribune 

Tribune, No. 5384, July 24, 1858 as a 
leading article; reprinted in the New-York 
Semi-Weekly Tribune, No. 1374, July 27, 
1858