That it is, in the opinion of your petitioners, no less necessary that the order of the transaction of business should be such as to make the participation of the council in the administration of India a substantial one. That to this end it is, in the opinion of your petitioners, indispensable that the dispatches to India should not be prepared by the minister, and laid before the council, but should be prepared by the council, and submitted to the minister. This would be in accordance with the natural and obvious principle, that persons, chosen for their knowledge of a subject, should suggest the mode of dealing with it, instead of merely giving their opinion on suggestions coming from elsewhere. This is also the only mode in which the members of the council can feel themselves sufficiently important, or sufficiently responsible, to secure their applying their minds to the subjects before them. It is almost unnecessary for your petitioners to observe, that the mind is called into far more vigorous action, by being required to propose, than by merely being called on to assent. The minister has necessarily the ultimate decision. If he has also the initiative, he has all the powers which are of any practical moment. A body whose only recognised function is to find fault, would speedily let that function fall into desuetude. They would feel that their co-operation in conducting the government of India was not really desired; that they were only felt as a clog on the wheels of business. Their criticism on what had been decided, without their being collectively consulted, would be felt as importunate as a mere delay and impediment; and their office would probably be seldom sought, but by those who were willing to allow its most important duties to become nominal.
That, with the duty of preparing the dispatches to India would naturally be combined the nomination and control of the home establishments. This your petitioners consider absolutely essential to the utility of the council. If the officers through whom they work are in direct dependence upon an authority higher than theirs, all matters of importance will in reality be settled between the minister and the subordinates, passing over the council altogether.
That a third consideration to which your petitioners attach great importance, is, that the number of the council should not be too restricted. India is so wide a field, that a practical acquaintance with every part of its affairs cannot be found combined in any small number of individuals. The council ought to contain men of general experience and knowledge of the world, also men specially qualified by financial and revenue experience, by judicial experience, diplomatic experience, military experience; it ought to contain persons conversant with the varied social relations, and varied institutions of Bengal, Madras, Bombay, the Northwestern Provinces, the Punjaub, and the native states. Even the present Court of Directors, reduced as it is in numbers by the act of 1853, does not contain all the varieties of knowledge and experience desirable in such a body; neither, your petitioners submit, would it be safe to limit the number to that which would be strictly sufficient, supposing all the appointments to be the best possible. A certain margin should be allowed for failures, which, even with the most conscientious selection, will sometimes occur. Your petitioners, moreover, cannot overlook the possibility, that if the nomination takes place by ministers at the head of a political party, it will not always be made with exclusive reference to personal qualifications; and it is indispensable to provide that such errors or faults in the nominating authority, so long as they are only occasional, shall not seriously impair the efficiency of the body.
That while these considerations plead strongly for a body not less numerous than the present, even if only regarded as advisers of the minister; their other office, as a check on the minister, forms, your petitioners submit, a no less forcible objection to any considerable reduction of the present number. A body of six or eight will not be equal to one of eighteen in that feeling of independent self-reliance which is necessary to induce a public body to press its opinion on a minister to whom that opinion is unacceptable. However unobjectionably in other respects so small a body may be constituted, reluctance to give offence will be likely, unless in extreme cases, to be a stronger habitual inducement in their minds than the desire to stand up for their convictions.
That if, in the opinion of your [lordships’] honourable House, a body can be constituted which unites the above enumerated requisites of good government, in a greater degree than the Court of Directors, your petitioners have only to express their humble hope that your endeavours for that purpose may be successful. But if, in enumerating the conditions of a good system of home government for India, your petitioners have, in fact, enumerated the qualities possessed by the present system, then your petitioners pray that your [lordships’] honourable House will continue the existing powers of the Court of Directors.
That your petitioners are aware that the present home government of India is reproached with being a double government; and that any arrangement by which an independent check is provided to the discretion of the minister, will be liable to a similar reproach. But they conceive that this accusation originates in an entire misconception of the functions devolving on the home government of India, and in the application to it of the principles applicable to purely executive departments. The executive government of India is, and must be, seated in India itself. The Court of Directors is not so much an executive as a deliberative body. Its principal function, and that of the home government generally, is not to direct the details of administration, but to scrutinise and revise the past acts of the Indian government—to lay down principles and issue general instructions for their future guidance—and to give or refuse sanction to great political measures, which are referred home for approval. These duties are more analogous to the functions of parliament than to those of an executive board; and it might almost as well be said that parliament, as that the government of India, should be constituted on the principles applicable to executive boards. It is considered an excellence, not a defect in the constitution of parliament, to be not merely a double but a triple government. An executive authority, your petitioners submit, may often with advantage be single, because promptitude is its first requisite. But the function of passing a deliberate opinion on past measures, and laying down principles of future policy, is a business which, in the estimation of your petitioners, admits of and requires the concurrence of more judgments than one. It is no defect in such a body to be double, and no excellence to be single, especially when it can only be made so by cutting off that branch of it which, by previous training, is always the best prepared—and often the only one which is prepared at all—for its peculiar duty.
That your petitioners have heard it asserted that, in consequence of what is called the double government, the Indian authorities are less responsible to parliament and the nation than other departments of the government of the empire, since it is impossible to know on which of the two branches of home government the responsibility ought to rest. Your petitioners fearlessly affirm that this impression is not only groundless, but the very reverse of the truth. The home government of India is not less, but more responsible than any other branch of the administration of the state; inasmuch as the president of the Board of Commissioners, who is the minister for India, is as completely responsible as any other of her Majesty’s ministers; and, in addition, his advisers also are responsible. It is always certain, in the case of India, that the president of the Board of Commissioners must have either commanded or sanctioned all that has been done. No more than this, your petitioners would submit, can be known in the case of the head of any department of her Majesty’s government. For it is not, nor can it rationally be supposed, that any minister of the Crown is without trusted advisers; and the minister for India must, for obvious reasons, be more dependent than any other of her Majesty’s ministers, upon the advice of persons whose lives have been devoted to the subject on which their advice has been given. But in the case of India such advisers are assigned to him by the constitution of the government, and they are as much responsible for what they advise, as he for what he ordains; while, in other departments, the minister’s only official advisers are the subordinates in his office, men often of great skill and experience, but not in the public eye, often unknown to the public even by name; official reserve precludes the possibility of ascertaining what advice they give, and they are responsible only to the minister himself. By what application of terms this can be called responsible government, and the joint government of your petitioners and the India Board an irresponsible government, your petitioners think it unnecessary to ask.
That, without knowing the plan on which her Majesty’s ministers contemplate the transfer to the Crown of the servants of the Company, your petitioners find themselves unable to approach the delicate question of the Indian army, further than to point out that the high military qualities of the officers of that army have unquestionably sprung, in a great degree, from its being a principal and substantive army, holding her Majesty’s commissions, and enjoying equal rank with her Majesty’s officers; and your petitioners would earnestly deprecate any change in that position.
That your petitioners having regard to all these considerations, humbly pray your [lordships’] honourable House that you will not give your sanction to any change in the constitution of the Indian government during the continuance of the present unhappy disturbances, nor without a full previous inquiry into the operation of the present system. And your petitioners further pray, that this inquiry may extend to every department of Indian administration. Such an inquiry your petitioners respectfully claim, not only as a matter of justice to themselves, but because, when, for the first time in this century, the thoughts of every public man in the country are fixed on India, an inquiry would be more thorough, and its results would carry much more instruction to the mind of parliament and of the country, than at any preceding period.