r. Reason is confounded. We interrogate the past in vain.
General rules are useless where the whole is one vast exception. The
Company is an anomaly; but it is part of a system where every thing is
anomaly. It is the strangest of all governments; but it is designed for
the strangest of all empires.

If we discard the Company, we must find a substitute: and, take what
substitute we may, we shall find ourselves unable to give any reason for
believing that the body which we have put in the room of the Company
is likely to acquit itself of its duties better than the Company.
Commissioners appointed by the King during pleasure would be no check on
the Crown; Commissioners appointed by the King or by Parliament for
life would always be appointed by the political party which might be
uppermost, and if a change of administration took place, would harass
the new Government with the most vexatious opposition. The plan
suggested by the right honourable Gentleman, the Member for
Montgomeryshire (Mr Charles Wynn.), is I think the very worst that I
have ever heard. He would have Directors nominated every four years
by the Crown. Is it not plain that these Directors would always be
appointed from among the supporters of the Ministry for the time being;
that their situations would depend on the permanence of that Ministry;
that therefore all their power and patronage would be employed for the
purpose of propping that Ministry, and, in case of a change, for the
purpose of molesting those who might succeed to power; that they would
be subservient while their friends were in, and factious when their
friends were out? How would Lord Grey's Ministry have been situated if
the whole body of Directors had been nominated by the Duke of Wellington
in 1830. I mean no imputation on the Duke of Wellington. If the present
ministers had to nominate Directors for four years, they would, I have
no doubt, nominate men who would give no small trouble to the Duke
of Wellington if he were to return to office. What we want is a body
independent of the Government, and no more than independent; not a tool
of the Treasury, not a tool of the opposition. No new plan which I have
heard proposed would give us such a body. The Company, strange as its
constitution may be, is such a body. It is, as a corporation, neither
Whig nor Tory, neither high-church nor low-church. It cannot be charged
with having been for or against the Catholic Bill, for or against
the Reform