London, Tuesday, 5th July, 1853 

The courier bearing the rejection of the Russian ultimatissimum* 
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 Gyulay 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 Nicholas. [...] 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 
to new sacrifices on our part, Russia will be found to devote more than ever her whole 
attention to interests which so immediately affect the power 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 paralyzed. No power, 
then, ought to be more interested than Austria in the conclusion of peace, but of a 
peace glorious to the Emperor and advantageous to his empire. For if the treaty we 
should sign did not bear this character, the political consideration and influence of 
Russia would experience through it a fatal blow, the prestige of her strength would 

? Of June 16, 1853.— Ed. 

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 
inefficacious.” (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 instructed 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 
determinedly 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 Advertisement Duty from ls. 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 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 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 

> July 2, 1853.— Ed. 
from The Times, No. 21470, July 2, 1853.— Ed. 

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 
concerned, 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 Times 
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 paragraphs, and most 
elaborate mercantile and market tables. It wrote steadily in favor of Temperance 
and Anti-Slavery, and he [Bright] ventured to say that there was not at this 
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 at the 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 a London morning paper, while his direct competitor in 
New York could buy a paper for 1d.? 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 I1d., 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 Chancellor 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 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 information. [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 0d. Mr. Cobden supported the motion, and in reply to 
Mr. Gladstone’s statement, that the 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 a duty 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 322 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 all is roses, and Sir Charles 
Wood receives 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 apologize 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 in 
the 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 running away, and a great portion of the 
remainder deserting with Herries 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 examined before a Committee of Inquiry, stated: 

“That the Charter giving a twenty years lease to the East India Company was 
considered by the natives of India as farming them out.”* 

1853, published in The Times, No. 21466, June 28, 1853.— Ed. 

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 farmers, to the precarious condition of 
tenants-at-will."4° This is so much gain for the natives. The 
Coalition Ministry has succeeded in transforming the Indian 
Government, like all other questions, into an open question. 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 a people 
ruling over another people numbering 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 congregation, 
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 Oedipus 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 a permanent 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, and 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 government. 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 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 India to make money out of it, began to enlarge their 
factories into an empire, when their competition with the Dutch 
and French private merchants assumed the character of nation- 
al rivalry, then, of course, the British Government com- 
menced 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 
superseded 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 of the 
Company altogether, it is, on the 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 any wise relate to or concern the 
Government or revenues of the Indian territories.” 

Directors are prohibited 

“from issuing any orders, instructions, dispatches, official letters, or communica- 
tions whatever relating to India, or to the Government thereof, until the same shall 
have been sanctioned by the Board.” 

Directors are ordered to 

“prepare instructions or orders upon any subject whatever at fourteen days’ 
notice from the Board, 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 respecting the Afghan and Burmese 
wars, and as to the occupation of Scinde were transmitted through 
this Secret Committee, without the Court of Directors 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 Directors. 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 Ellenborough. But this is still not their 
most important privilege. Receiving only £300 per annum, they are 
really paid in patronage, distributing all the writerships 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 ascertained, 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 litthe or no check from the public opinion 
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, in 
the course of the pending debates, defended the Court by the 
particular plea, that it was impotent to effect all the evils it might 
intend, so much so, that all improvements had been 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 ruinous 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 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 gentle- 
men, possessing 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 
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 appointed 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 continued 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 stuff 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 principles, 
and the system of the Court of Directors. The real Court of 

Directors and the real Home Government, &c., 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 little 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 of their Indian factories, 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 transforming 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. Dickinson: 

‘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 a reply, 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, it is 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 announce- 
ment 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 their 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 calculators 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.