this course had been taken, the Company must,
in a very few years, have abandoned the trade, or the trade would have
ruined the Company. It was not, however, solely or principally by regard
for the interest of the Company, or of English merchants generally, that
the Government was guided on this occasion. The course which appeared to
us the most likely to promote the interests of our Eastern Empire was to
make the proprietors of India stock creditors of the Indian territory.
Their interest will thus be in a great measure the same with the
interest of the people whom they are to rule. Their income will depend
on the revenues of their empire. The revenues of their empire
will depend on the manner in which the affairs of that empire are
administered. We furnish them with the strongest motives to watch over
the interests of the cultivator and the trader, to maintain peace, to
carry on with vigour the work of retrenchment, to detect and punish
extortion and corruption. Though they live at a distance from India,
though few of them have ever seen or may ever see the people whom they
rule, they will have a great stake in the happiness of their subjects.
If their misgovernment should produce disorder in the finances, they
will themselves feel the effects of that disorder in their own household
expenses. I believe this to be, next to a representative constitution,
the constitution which is the best security for good government. A
representative constitution India cannot at present have. And we have
therefore, I think, given her the best constitution of which she is
capable.

One word as to the new arrangement which we propose with respect to the
patronage. It is intended to introduce the principle of competition
in the disposal of writerships; and from this change I cannot but
anticipate the happiest results. The civil servants of the Company are
undoubtedly a highly respectable body of men; and in that body, as in
every large body, there are some persons of very eminent ability. I
rejoice most cordially to see this. I rejoice to see that the standard
of morality is so high in England, that intelligence is so generally
diffused through England, that young persons who are taken from the mass
of society, by favour and not by merit, and who are therefore only
fair samples of the mass, should, when placed in situations of high
importance, be so seldom found wanting. But it is not the less true that
India is entitled to the service of