ntinck to put the dawks
all over Bengal on horseback. If the Court refused to send out this
dispatch, the Board could apply to the King's Bench for a mandamus. If,
on the other hand, the Directors wished to accelerate the journeys of
the mail, and the Board were adverse to the project, the Directors could
do nothing at all. For all measures of internal policy the servants
of the King are at least as deeply responsible as the Company. For all
measures of foreign policy the servants of the King, and they alone are
responsible. I was surprised to hear the honourable Gentleman accuse the
Directors of insatiable ambition and rapacity, when he must know that
no act of aggression on any native state can be committed by the Company
without the sanction of the Board, and that, in fact, the Board has
repeatedly approved of warlike measures which were strenuously opposed
by the Company. He must know, in particular, that, during the energetic
and splendid administration of the Marquess of Wellesley, the company
was all for peace, and the Board all for conquest. If a line of conduct
which the honourable Gentleman thinks unjustifiable has been followed
by the Ministers of the Crown in spite of the remonstrances of
the Directors, this is surely a strange reason for turning off the
Directors, and giving the whole power unchecked to the Crown.

The honourable Member tells us that India, under the present system, is
not so rich and flourishing as she was two hundred years ago. Really,
Sir, I doubt whether we are in possession of sufficient data to enable
us to form a judgment on that point. But the matter is of little
importance. We ought to compare India under our government, not with
India under Acbar and his immediate successors, but with India as we
found it. The calamities through which that country passed during the
interval between the fall of the Mogul power and the establishment of
the English supremacy were sufficient to throw the people back whole
centuries. It would surely be unjust to say, that Alfred was a bad king
because Britain, under his government, was not so rich or so civilised
as in the time of the Romans.

In what state, then, did we find India? And what have we made India? We
found society throughout that vast country in a state to which history
scarcely furnishes a parallel. The nearest parallel would, perhaps, be
the state of Europe during the fifth century. The Mogul empire in the
time of the successors of Aur