al times been on the point
of producing fatal consequences to the peace and resources of
India;--those, I think, are the words in which Warren Hastings described
the effect of the contest between his Government and the Judges;--but
that it has not actually produced such consequences. The most
distinguished members of the Indian Government, the most distinguished
Judges of the Supreme Court, call upon you to reform this system. Sir
Charles Metcalfe, Sir Charles Grey, represent with equal urgency the
expediency of having one single paramount council armed with legislative
power. The admission of Europeans to India renders it absolutely
necessary not to delay our decision. The effect of that admission would
be to raise a hundred questions, to produce a hundred contests between
the Council and the judicature. The Government would be paralysed at the
precise moment at which all its energy was required. While the two equal
powers were acting in opposite directions, the whole machine of the
state would stand still. The Europeans would be uncontrolled. The
natives would be unprotected. The consequences I will not pretend to
foresee. Everything beyond is darkness and confusion.

Having given to the Government supreme legislative power, we next
propose to give to it for a time the assistance of a commission for the
purpose of digesting and reforming the laws of India, so that those laws
may, as soon as possible, be formed into a Code. Gentleman of whom I
wish to speak with the highest respect have expressed a doubt whether
India be at present in a fit state to receive a benefit which is not yet
enjoyed by this free and highly civilised country. Sir, I can allow to
this argument very little weight beyond that which it derives from the
personal authority of those who use it. For, in the first place, our
freedom and our high civilisation make this improvement, desirable as
it must always be, less indispensably necessary to us than to our Indian
subjects; and in the next place, our freedom and civilisation, I fear,
make it far more difficult for us to obtain this benefit for ourselves
than to bestow it on them.

I believe that no country ever stood so much in need of a code of laws
as India; and I believe also that there never was a country in which the
want might so easily be supplied. I said that there were many points of
analogy between the state of that country after the fall of the Mogul
power, and the state of Europe after the