The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan, 1856-7-8

by George Dodd

That your petitioners cannot contemplate without dismay the doctrine now widely promulgated, that India should be administered with an especial view to the benefit of the English who reside there—or that in its administration any advantages should be sought for her Majesty’s subjects of European birth, except that which they will necessarily derive from their superiority of intelligence, and from the increased prosperity of the people, the improvement of the productive resources of the country, and the extension of commercial intercourse. Your petitioners regard it as the most honourable characteristic of the government of India by England, that it has acknowledged no such distinction as that of a dominant and a subject race; but has held that its first duty was to the people of India. Your petitioners feel that a great portion of the hostility with which they are assailed, is caused by the belief that they are peculiarly the guardians of this principle, and that, so long as they have any voice in the administration of India, it cannot easily be infringed; and your petitioners will not conceal their belief that their exclusion from any part in the government is likely, at the present time, to be regarded in India as a first successful attack on that principle.

That your petitioners, therefore, most earnestly represent to your [lordships’] honourable House that even if the contemplated change could be proved to be in itself advisable, the present is a most unsuitable time for entertaining it; and they most strongly and respectfully urge on your [lordships’] honourable House the expediency of at least deferring any such change until it can be effected at a period when it would not be, in the minds of the people of India, directly connected with the recent calamitous events, and with the feelings to which those events have either given rise, or have afforded an opportunity of manifestation. Such postponement, your petitioners submit, would allow time for a more mature consideration than has yet been given, or can be given in the present excited state of the public mind, to the various questions connected with the organisation of a government for India; and would enable the most competent minds in the nation calmly to examine whether any new arrangement can be devised for the home government of India uniting a greater number of the conditions of good administration than the present, and if so, which, among the numerous schemes which have been or may be proposed, possesses those requisites in the greatest degree.

That your petitioners have always willingly acquiesced in any changes which, after discussion by parliament, were deemed conducive to the general welfare, although such changes may have involved important sacrifices to themselves. They would refer to their partial relinquishment of trade in 1813; to its total abandonment, and the placing of their commercial charter in abeyance in 1833; to the transfer to India of their commercial assets, amounting to £15,858,000, a sum greatly exceeding that ultimately repayable to them in respect of their capital, independent of territorial rights and claims; and to their concurrence, in 1853, in the measure by which the Court of Directors was reconstructed, and reduced to its present number. In the same spirit, your petitioners would most gladly co-operate with her Majesty’s government in correcting any defects which may be considered to exist in the details of the present system; and they would be prepared, without a murmur, to relinquish their trust altogether, if a better system for the control of the government of India can be devised. But as they believe that, in the construction of such a system, there are conditions which cannot, without the most dangerous consequences, be departed from, your petitioners respectfully and deferentially submit to the judgment of your [lordships’] honourable House their view of those conditions, in the hope that if your [lordships’] honourable House should see reason to agree in that view, you will withhold your legislative sanction from any arrangement for the government of India which does not fulfil the conditions in question in at least an equal degree with the present.

That your petitioners may venture to assume that it will not be proposed to vest the home portion of the administration of India in a minister of the Crown, without the adjunct of a council composed of statesmen experienced in Indian affairs. Her Majesty’s ministers cannot but be aware that the knowledge necessary for governing a foreign country, and in particular a country like India, requires as much special study as any other profession, and cannot possibly be possessed by any one who has not devoted a considerable portion of his life to the acquisition of it.

That in constituting a body of experienced advisers, to be associated with the Indian minister, your petitioners consider it indispensable to bear in mind that this body should not only be qualified to advise the minister, but also, by its advice, to exercise, to a certain degree, a moral check. It cannot be expected that the minister, as a general rule, should himself know India; while he will be exposed to perpetual solicitations from individuals and bodies, either entirely ignorant of that country, or knowing only enough of it to impose on those who know still less than themselves, and having very frequently objects in view other than the interests or good government of India. The influences likely to be brought to bear on him through the organs of popular opinion will, in the majority of cases, be equally misleading. The public opinion of England, itself necessarily unacquainted with Indian affairs, can only follow the promptings of those who take most pains to influence it; and these will generally be such as have some private interest to serve. It is, therefore, your petitioners submit, of the utmost importance that any council which may form a part of the home government of India should derive sufficient weight from its constitution, and from the relation it occupies to the minister, to be a substantial barrier against those inroads of self-interest and ignorance in this country from which the government of India has hitherto been comparatively free, but against which it would be too much to expect that parliament should of itself afford a sufficient protection.

That your petitioners cannot well conceive a worse form of government for India, than a minister with a council whom he should be at liberty to consult or not at his pleasure, or whose advice he should be able to disregard without giving his reasons in writing, and in a manner likely to carry conviction. Such an arrangement, your petitioners submit, would be really liable to the objections in their opinion erroneously urged against the present system. Your petitioners respectfully represent that any body of persons associated with the minister, which is not a check, will be a screen. Unless the council is so constituted as to be personally independent of the minister; unless it feels itself responsible for recording an opinion on every Indian subject, and pressing that opinion on the minister, whether it is agreeable to him or not; and unless the minister, when he overrules their opinion, is bound to record his reasons—its existence will only serve to weaken his responsibility, and to give the colourable sanction of prudence and experience to measures in the framing of which those qualities have had no share.

That it would be vain to expect that a new council could have as much moral influence, and power of asserting its opinion with effect, as the Court of Directors. A new body can no more succeed to the feelings and authority which their antiquity and their historical antecedents give to the East India Company, than a legislature, under a new name, sitting in Westminster, would have the moral ascendency of the Houses of Lords and Commons. One of the most important elements of usefulness will thus be necessarily wanting in any newly constituted Indian Council, as compared with the present.

That your petitioners find it difficult to conceive that the same independence, in judgment and act, which characterises the Court of Directors will be found in any council all of whose members are nominated by the crown. Owing their nomination to the same authority, many of them probably to the same individual minister whom they are appointed to check, and looking to him alone for their re-appointment, their desire of recommending themselves to him, and their unwillingness to risk his displeasure by any serious resistance to his wishes, will be motives too strong not to be in danger of exercising a powerful and injurious influence over their conduct. Nor are your petitioners aware of any mode in which that injurious influence could be guarded against, except by conferring the appointments, like those of the judges, during good behaviour; which, by rendering it impossible to correct an error once committed, would be seriously objectionable.

That your petitioners are equally unable to perceive how, if the controlling body is entirely nominated by the minister, that happy independence of parliamentary and party influence which has hitherto distinguished the administration of India, and the appointment to situations of trust and importance in that country, can be expected to continue. Your petitioners believe that in no government known to history have appointments to offices, and especially to high offices, been so rarely bestowed on any other considerations than those of personal fitness. This characteristic, but for which, in all probability, India would long since have been lost to this country, is, your petitioners conceive, entirely owing to the circumstance that the dispensers of patronage have been persons unconnected with party, and under no necessity of conciliating parliamentary support; that consequently the appointments to offices in India have been, as a rule, left to the unbiassed judgment of the local authorities; while the nominations to the civil and military services have been generally bestowed on the middle classes, irrespective of political considerations, and in a large proportion on the relatives of persons who had distinguished themselves by their services in India.

That your petitioners therefore think it essential that at least a majority of the council which assists the minister for India with its advice, should hold their seats independently of his appointment.