d been
awarded to the Company, India would have lost more than the largest
sum which, as it seems to me, she can possibly lose under the proposed
arrangement.

In a pecuniary point of view, therefore, I conceive that we can defend
the measure as it affects the territory. But to the territory the
pecuniary question is of secondary importance. If we have made a good
pecuniary bargain for India, but a bad political bargain, if we have
saved three or four millions to the finances of that country, and given
to it, at the same time, pernicious institutions, we shall indeed have
been practising a most ruinous parsimony. If, on the other hand, it
shall be found that we have added fifty or a hundred thousand pounds
a-year to the expenditure of an empire which yields a revenue of twenty
millions, but that we have at the same time secured to that empire, as
far as in us lies, the blessings of good government, we shall have no
reason to be ashamed of our profusion. I hope and believe that India
will have to pay nothing. But on the most unfavourable supposition that
can be made, she will not have to pay so much to the Company as she now
pays annually to a single state pageant, to the titular Nabob of Bengal,
for example, or the titular King of Delhi. What she pays to these
nominal princes, who, while they did anything, did mischief, and who
now do nothing, she may well consent to pay to her real rulers, if
she receives from them, in return, efficient protection and good
legislation.

We come then to the great question. Is it desirable to retain the
Company as an organ of government for India? I think that it is
desirable. The question is, I acknowledge, beset with difficulties. We
have to solve one of the hardest problems in politics. We are trying to
make brick without straw, to bring a clean thing out of an unclean,
to give a good government to a people to whom we cannot give a free
government. In this country, in any neighbouring country, it is easy to
frame securities against oppression. In Europe, you have the materials
of good government everywhere ready to your hands. The people are
everywhere perfectly competent to hold some share, not in every country
an equal share, but some share of political power. If the question were,
What is the best mode of securing good government in Europe? the merest
smatterer in politics would answer, representative institutions.
In India you cannot have representative institutions. Of all the