Sir George Cornewall Lewis, House of Commons, 12 February 1858

I NOW come to the other point in the petition of the Company; namely, their claiming credit for having exercised their government in India in a manner to command universal admiration, and to render it a model for all Governments on the face of the earth. This is the manner in which the Company speak of themselves in the petition presented to this House:

'They feel complete assurance that, the more attention is bestowed and the more light thrown upon India and its administration, the more evident it will become that the Government in which they have borne a part has been not only one of the purest in intention, but one of the most beneficent in act ever known among mankind.'

It must be acknowledged that the character which the Company bestow on themselves is not very remarkable for the moderation of its terms. Let us inquire how far this character rests on the evidence of facts. The Company may be said to have originated with respect to its power at the time of the union of the two Companies, which were consolidated in the reign of William III, and remained substantially a trading Company until the battle Plassey was fought by Clive, who shortly after the foundations of the territorial sovereignty in Bengal, by the acquisition of the duannee. A years after the Government of England began to make a claim on the Company for a share of their territorial acquisitions, and the Company came to promise with the Government, by which they were to pay an annual sum of money, instead of, as proposed by Lord Clive to Lord Chatham, the Crown taking possession of the territorial acquisition. This state of things continued for a few years, until the abuses prevailing in the administration of the Company attracted the attention of the legislature; and in 1773, under the Ministry of Lord North, was passed what was called the Regulating Act, by which Parliament first interfered with the local government of India. By this measure it was attempted to place a control, not on the Company in London, but on the local government in India. The members of the local council in India were named in the Act of 1773. Five members were named, and three went out from England to conduct the local government, two being at the time in India, one of whom was Warren Hastings. The result of that attempt at Parliamentary control was dissensions without end in Council, duels between two of the members, a conflict with the Supreme Court; and the experiment ended with a conviction on the part of Parliament that the endeavour to subject the government to direct Parliamentary control was a complete failure. I should observe, that by the Act of 1773 power was taken for the Secretary of State and the Board of Treasury to examine all the correspondence received in England from India. Even at that time the principle of Parliamentary control over the proceedings of the Company was established, and it is material for the House to observe the fact, inasmuch as an assumption is made in popular arguments that Parliament for the first time interfered to control the administration of the Company by the Act of 1784. That is a mistake, for by the Regulating Act of 1773 a control was taken for the Crown over the nomination of the members of the Council whenever any vacancies occurred; and power also was taken for the Secretary of State and the Board of Treasury to inspect all correspondence received from India. In a few years, however, it was found that those powers were not sufficient, and, in 1781, Lord North carried a Bill by which he enlarged the superintending authority of the Government, and enabled them to control the correspondence sent from the Board of Directors to the authorities in India. This was, in fact, the germ of the system which was afterwards promulgated in Mr. Pitt's Act of 1784. Notwithstanding these successive interferences of Parliamentary control, it was found that the administration of India did not improve-complaints multiplied; and committees of the House were appointed in 1782 and 1783, who made a long succession of reports, which any gentleman who may be curious to read old documents of that description will find included in four very large folio volumes, compared with which our modern blue books are quite puny and degenerate. The whole subject of the Indian administration was at that time investigated by two committees of this House, one of them presided over by Mr. Burke and the other by Mr. Dundas, who was afterwards President of the Board of Control. Those committees made, I believe, not less than seventeen reports. I state that fact for the purpose of showing that, at the time to which I refer, the whole subject of Indian affairs underwent a most careful investigation by this House. Those, therefore, who suppose that the administration of the East India Company during the ten years from 1773 to 1784 was one course of uninterrupted prosperity must be singularly uninformed in the Parliamentary history of that period. I will take the liberty of reading an extract from resolutions which were moved in this House in 1784 by Mr. Burke, in which he describes the result of these Parliamentary inquiries; and if it were necessary; if the truth of, what I am now stating should be disputed, I could produce a multitude of passages from the reports and from speeches made at that time which would support every one of the sweeping condemnations in the passages I am about to read. I ask the attention of the House to this summary of the investigations then made, inasmuch as I think it will show them how far the character which the Company give to themselves for their administration is true during the time when the administration was really that of the Company-when the pure, simple, unmixed management of the Company and their officers existed, with a very imperfect control, though with some control even then, on the part of the Executive Government. These are the terms of the resolution moved by Mr. Burke in 1784:

'The result of the Parliamentary inquiries has been that the East India Company was found totally corrupted and totally perverted from the purposes of its institution, whether political or commercial; that the powers of war and peace given by the Charter had been abused by kindling hostilities in every quarter for the purposes of rapine; that almost all the treaties of peace they have made have only given cause to so many breaches of public faith; that countries once the most flourishing are reduced to a state of indigence, decay, and depopulation, to the diminution of our strength, and to the infinite dishonour of our national character; that the laws of this kingdom are notoriously and almost in every instance despised; that the servants of the Company, by the purchase of qualifications to vote in the general Court, and, at length, by getting the Company itself deeply in their debt, having obtained the entire and absolute mastery in the body by which they ought to have been ruled and coerced. Thus their malversations in office are supported instead of being checked by the Company. The whole of the affairs of that body are reduced to a most perilous situation; and many millions of innocent and deserving men who are under the protection of this nation, and who ought to be protected by it, are oppressed by a most despotic and rapacious tyranny. The Company and their servants have strengthened themselves by this confederacy, they have set at defiance the authority and admonitions of this House employed to reform them; and when this House had selected certain principal delinquents, whom they declared it the duty of the Company to recall, the Company held out its legal privileges against all reformation, positively refused to recall them, and supported those who had fallen under the just censure of this House with new and stronger marks of approbation.'

Now, I affirm that this language, strong as it may sound at this moment to a House not familiar with the scenes of rapine, of extortion, and of every species of abomination which had been brought out in evidence before the committees of 1782 and 1783, is a perfectly faithful representation of the opinions which prevailed in Parliament at that time with respect to the government of the East India Company. I most confidently maintain that this notion which has got abroad-this sentiment--of the great debt of gratitude which we owe to the East India Company is one that was not only entirely unknown, but most alien to the feelings of the generation who knew what the Company was before Parliament had interfered to control it. I do most confidently maintain that no civilized Government ever existed on the face of this earth which was more corrupt, more perfidious, and more rapacious than the Government of the East India Company from the years 1765 to 1784. That was the interval between the period when it first acquired territorial sovereignty and the time when it was placed under Parliamentary control. During that interval the Company exercised the functions of trader and governor in combination, with most imperfect control on the part of the Government and Parliament of this country; and I appeal most confidently to the records of Parliament, to the evidence in the reports and documents of this House, for conclusive proof damnatory of the character of the East India Company as a political body. With these documents before me, I confess that I cannot read without astonishment the character which the Company have bestowed upon themselves, founded, as that character is, entirely upon their acts since the time when they were subjected to Parliamentary supervision-since the time when there has been a Board of Control to superintend the proceedings of the Directors in London-since the Governor-General and the other Governors of India have been appointed, not by the Directors themselves, but by the Crown and Executive Government of this country, subject to public opinion and to Parliamentary responsibility. Now, all that can be said in favour of the Company dates from the year 1784. I challenge them to find one bright page in their annals during the whole period when they were not subject to Parliamentary control. It is by confounding the acts of two periods-by suppressing their conduct in bygone days, which have passed from the memory of the present generation, and the records of which are to be found chiefly in histories written by servants of the Company, and therefore not weighing with very great force on their misdoings--and by concentrating our vision upon subsequent times, when they had become a mere subordinate body acting under the control of the Executive Government,--that they are enabled to claim for themselves this extraordinary credit.

Now, let us briefly follow the history of the Company from the year 1784. We know that before that time Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke--the latter of whom had been the chairman of one of the committees to which I have referred--who was deeply impressed with the enormities of the Company's Government, and who, in the subsequent impeachment of Warren Hastings brought under the attention of the House of Lords, in speeches destined to be coeval with the English language, the misdeeds of the Governor whose acts he impugned-we know that Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke combined to frame the clauses of the first India Bill, which nearly annihilated the rule of the Company. There was not at that time any feeling of sympathy with the Company on the part of the people of this country; but the defeat of the measure was attributable to alarm respecting the Indian patronage, and to the belief that, as the Commissioners for India were named in the Bill, and were the partisans of the Executive Government, an unconstitutional power would be conferred upon them. Notwithstanding this prejudice, the Bill passed the House of Commons, but it was thrown out by the House of Lords, in consequence, as was believed, of the personal influence of the King, who took alarm at the independent authority which he thought would be conferred by the measure upon his Minister. The Bill was not defeated from any sympathy on the part of the country with the Company; but Mr. Pitt, with great dexterity, took advantage of the alarm which that measure excited, from the notion that Mr. Fox intended to avail himself improperly of the power which the Bill would have conferred upon the Government, and the Ministry were defeated. The Government fell; Mr. Pitt succeeded them, and he introduced that system of a mixed government which has lasted in a certain form down to the present day. Any gentleman who will take the trouble to read the speech in which Mr. Pitt introduced his measure will see that he laid it down as a principle that there was an overwhelming and imperative necessity for legislating upon the subject of India--that the public opinion of that time absolutely required that the East India Company should not be left to continue in the exercise of its uncontrolled powers. Mr. Pitt, having thrown out the Government of Mr. Fox upon the previous Bill, left the East India Company in possession of its powers, both as respects the government and the trade, but he created a Board of Control which was, to predominate in all respects over the acts of the Directors. Now the House will observe that the effect of the institution of that Board of Control; was wholly to alter the character of the East India Company. Up to this time the East India Company, with the exception of those rudiments of Parliamentary interference which I have described, was a trading Company, exercising sovereign powers over certain provinces in India. The institution of the Board of Control placed the East India Company at once, with respect to its governing powers, in a purely subordinate position. They were from that time bound to obey every order which the Board of Control chose to issue. They retained, no doubt, the initiative, and practically they continued to exercise great influence over the affairs of India, but legally and constitutionally they were reduced to perfect subordination, and they were placed completely under the control of this department of the Government. In 1793, Mr. Dundas, who was then President of the Board of Control, brought in a Bill of great length, in which he consolidated all the existing enactments on the subject of the Company, giving them greater definiteness and greater precision; and he brought to complete perfection the system of the double government originated in 1784. He renewed the Company's charter for twenty years; and in that condition it remained until the year 1813. In 1813 the opinions on the subject of free trade had spread more widely in the country, the impatience of the trading community at the double monopoly exercised by the East India Company made itself felt, and the Government of the day determined to propose the abolition of its monopoly of the trade with India, preserving, however, its monopoly of the China trade. That mighty change, so far as the East India Company were concerned, was introduced in 1813. They were not prohibited from trading with India; but their monopoly was gone. That, in fact, was the first great stone struck out of the edifice of the East India Company. They had originally been merely a trading Company; their sovereign powers had come incidentally; they acquired incidentally great territorial revenues; but their main and paramount character was that of traders. If the House of Commons of that day had acted under the influence of feelings which we are told now we ought to respect,-if it had been the belief of the Parliament of that time that a boundless debt of gratitude was owing to the East India Company for their acquisitions of territory in India-can anyone doubt that their trading monopoly would have been retained as one of the most precious flowers of their prerogative? Parliament, however, was bold enough to lay its profane hands on the ark of the East India Company, and they were deprived of the monopoly of the Indian trade. Deprived of the monopoly of the Indian trade, the Company was distanced by private traders, and I believe they exercised but little of their trading privileges after the time they lost their monopoly. But they retained the monopoly of the China trade for another twenty years. At last came the year 1833. In that year Mr. Charles Grant, now Lord Glenelg, was President of the Board of Control. In proposing the Bill of that year to the House of Commons he stated that the Government had two matters for consideration: one was whether the Company should retain their governing powers; the other, whether they should retain their trading powers. Some thought they should be deprived of both. The Government came to the conclusion that the whole of their trading powers should be abolished by law; that they should cease altogether to be a trading Company, and that not only should their monopoly of the China trade be abolished, but that they should be prohibited by law from trading either with India or with China; but, he stated, however, that the Government did not propose to interfere with the governing powers of the Company, subject, of course, to the control of the Executive Government.

Observe the changes which the East India Company had then undergone under the legislation of Parliament. Having originally been only a trading Company--having acquired incidentally governing powers, their governing powers were first placed under the control of a Board of the Executive Government, so that they became only subordinate governors; but they retained their original capacity for trade. In 1833 they were prohibited by law from trading, so that by that time they had lost altogether their original functions as traders, and they retained only a portion of governing power in a subordinate capacity. That was the change which under the legislation of Parliament the character and power of the East India Company underwent. Be it remarked that it was a constant diminution of authority and power, and a perpetual invasion of their functions, under the authority of Parliament. Again in 1833, the sentimental view of the question was-altogether overlooked--nothing was heard of the debt of gratitude due to the East India Company, but in consequence of more enlightened views on the subject of freedom of trade which then prevailed, as well as of representations of the mercantile classes, the whole trade of China and India was thrown open. The Company then obtained another lease of twenty years, expiring in 1853. During that time they were the mere ghost, as it were, of the former Company, which was once sovereign, which once enjoyed the monopoly of great branches of trade; they became a mere governing body of Directors, all their trading power was gone, and the controlling power and the appointment of their principal officers were vested in the Executive. They continued in that inferior position for twenty years under the control of the Government in England, the Ministry sending out instructions, and all the principal authorities of India being appointed, not by the Company as originally, but by Government. Then came the renewal of 1853. There was nothing in the circumstances of that time to call for interference. The twenty years had gone on in a manner not to incur the censure of the House or of the Government; in a greatly improved spirit, owing, as I must maintain, in contradiction to the allegations which have been made, to the vigilance of Parliament and to the effective control of the India Board. But even under those favourable circumstances Parliament did not renew the Charter without further invasion of the original constitution of the Company. By the Act of that year one-third of the Court of Directors was formed of nominees of the Crown, so that only two-thirds remained to be elected by the proprietors of India Stock; and there was good reason for this alteration. When the East India Company existed as traders to the East Indies it was reasonable that persons who subscribed their money to the common stock, and advanced their capital to carry on their ventures to the East, should have a voice in the election of the Directors, exactly upon the same principle as applies to the direction of any other joint-stock company. It is the same principle by which shareholders of railway companies elect a board of Directors, or shareholders of the Bank of England, for example, elect the Directors of the Bank. But what was the position of the proprietors of East India Stock, with reference to the Government of India, after the Company had ceased to be a trading Company? Any person may become an East India proprietor by purchase of stock in the open market, and there is therefore now no necessary connexion between the members of the Court of Proprietors and the affairs of India. Originally the proprietors were persons who had advanced capital for carrying on trade with India; but at present they are only proprietors of so many shares of a guaranteed stock, and the purchase of that stock gives them no more real connexion with the affairs of India than the purchase of so much three per cent. stock. The constituency which elect the Board of Directors is an accidental body, and has no real relation with the interests or Government of India. The Board of Directors themselves are the mere spectre and phantom of that body which used to carry on the whole trade with India and China, and the proprietors are reduced to the condition of mere holders of an ordinary stock. This is the state to which successive legislative changes have brought that body. The fallacy which pervades the petition of the Company is this--It speaks of the East India Company as one and indivisible-as if from the time of the battle of Plassey down to the last renewal of the Charter it had remained unchanged in character, functions, and influence. The truth is, that it has undergone as important changes during those hundred years as the English constitution between the Heptarchy and the reign of Queen Victoria. It is therefore the most transparent sophism-it is offering an insult to our understanding-to apply arguments founded upon the original and unchanged state of the Company to the Company in its modern and altered form.

From: A. Berriedale Keith, ed. Speeches and Documents on Indian Policy, 1750-1921. Vol. I. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1922, 342-355.