Bill. It has constantly acted with a view not to English
politics, but to Indian politics. We have seen the country convulsed
by faction. We have seen Ministers driven from office by this House,
Parliament dissolved in anger, general elections of unprecedented
turbulence, debates of unprecedented interest. We have seen the two
branches of the Legislature placed in direct opposition to each other.
We have seen the advisers of the Crown dismissed one day, and brought
back the next day on the shoulders of the people. And amidst all these
agitating events the Company has preserved strict and unsuspected
neutrality. This is, I think an inestimable advantage, and it is an
advantage which we must altogether forego, if we consent to adopt any of
the schemes which I have heard proposed on the other side of the House.

We must judge of the Indian government, as of all other governments, by
its practical effects. According to the honourable Member for Sheffield,
India is ill governed; and the whole fault is with the Company.
Innumerable accusations, great and small, are brought by him against the
Directors. They are fond of war: they are fond of dominion: the taxation
is burthensome: the laws are undigested: the roads are rough: the post
goes on foot: and for everything the Company is answerable. From
the dethronement of the Mogul princes to the mishaps of Sir Charles
Metcalfe's courier, every disaster that has taken place in the East
during sixty years is laid to the charge of this Corporation. And the
inference is, that all the power which they possess ought to be taken
out of their hands, and transferred at once to the Crown.

Now, Sir, it seems to me that, for all the evils which the honourable
Gentleman has so pathetically recounted, the Ministers of the Crown are
as much to blame as the Company; nay, much more so: for the Board of
Control could, without the consent of the Directors, have redressed
those evils; and the Directors most certainly could not have redressed
them without the consent of the Board of Control. Take the case of that
frightful grievance which seems to have made the deepest impression on
the mind of the honourable Gentleman, the slowness of the mail. Why,
Sir, if my right honourable friend, the President of our Board thought
fit, he might direct me to write to the Court and require them to frame
a dispatch on that subject. If the Court disobeyed, he might himself
frame a dispatch ordering Lord William Be