cts, after commanding victorious armies, after
dictating terms of peace at the gates of hostile capitals, after
administering the revenues of great provinces, after judging the causes
of wealthy Zemindars, after residing at the courts of tributary Kings,
return to their native land with no more than a decent competence.

I see a government anxiously bent on the public good. Even in its errors
I recognise a paternal feeling towards the great people committed to
its charge. I see toleration strictly maintained: yet I see bloody
and degrading superstitions gradually losing their power. I see the
morality, the philosophy, the taste of Europe, beginning to produce a
salutary effect on the hearts and understandings of our subjects. I see
the public mind of India, that public mind which we found debased
and contracted by the worst forms of political and religious tyranny,
expanding itself to just and noble views of the ends of government and
of the social duties of man.

I see evils: but I see the government actively employed in the work
of remedying those evils. The taxation is heavy; but the work of
retrenchment is unsparingly pursued. The mischiefs arising from the
system of subsidiary alliance are great: but the rulers of India are
fully aware of those mischiefs, and are engaged in guarding against
them. Wherever they now interfere for the purpose of supporting a native
government, they interfere also for the purpose of reforming it.

Seeing these things, then, am I prepared to discard the Company as
an organ of government? I am not. Assuredly I will never shrink from
innovation where I see reason to believe that innovation will
be improvement. That the present Government does not shrink from
innovations which it considers as improvements the bill now before the
House sufficiently shows. But surely the burden of the proof lies on the
innovators. They are bound to show that there is a fair probability
of obtaining some advantage before they call upon us to take up the
foundations of the Indian government. I have no superstitious veneration
for the Court of Directors or the Court of Proprietors. Find me a better
Council: find me a better constituent body: and I am ready for a change.
But of all the substitutes for the Company which have hitherto been
suggested, not one has been proved to be better than the Company; and
most of them I could, I think, easily prove to be worse. Circumstances
might force us to hazard a change.