If the Company were to refuse to
accept of the government unless we would grant pecuniary terms which I
thought extravagant, or unless we gave up the clauses in this bill which
permit Europeans to hold landed property and natives to hold office, I
would take them at their word. But I will not discard them in the mere
rage of experiment.

Do I call the government of India a perfect government? Very far from
it. No nation can be perfectly well governed till it is competent to
govern itself. I compare the Indian government with other governments of
the same class, with despotisms, with military despotisms, with foreign
military despotisms; and I find none that approaches it in excellence.
I compare it with the government of the Roman provinces, with the
government of the Spanish colonies; and I am proud of my country and my
age. Here are a hundred millions of people under the absolute rule of
a few strangers, differing from them physically, differing from them
morally, mere Mamelukes, not born in the country which they rule,
not meaning to lay their bones in it. If you require me to make this
government as good as that of England, France, or the United States of
America, I own frankly that I can do no such thing. Reasoning a priori,
I should have come to the conclusion that such a government must be a
horrible tyranny. It is a source of constant amazement to me that it is
so good as I find it to be. I will not, therefore, in a case in which
I have neither principles nor precedents to guide me, pull down the
existing system on account of its theoretical defects. For I know that
any system which I could put in its place would be equally condemned by
theory, while it would not be equally sanctioned by experience.

Some change in the constitution of the Company was, as I have shown,
rendered inevitable by the opening of the China Trade; and it was
the duty of the Government to take care that the change should not
be prejudicial to India. There were many ways in which the compromise
between commerce and territory might have been effected. We might have
taken the assets, and paid a sum down, leaving the Company to invest
that sum as they chose. We might have offered English security with a
lower interest. We might have taken the course which the late ministers
designed to take. They would have left the Company in possession of the
means of carrying on its trade in competition with private merchants. My
firm belief is that, if