John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

96 DRAFTS THE INDIA COMPANY S PETITION. 1849-1873.
mately submitted, after some slight amendments by the Court
of Directors, was pronounced by Earl Grey the ablest state-paper
he had ever read. The following are the introductory sentences,
the point and pungency of which the greatest orator might be
of :
proud
"
That your Petitioners, at their own expense, and by the
agency of their own civil and military servants, originally ac
quired for this country its magnificent empire in the East.
" That the foundations of this empire were laid by your
Petitioners, at that time neither aided nor controlled by Parlia
ment, at the same period at which a succession of administra
tions under the control of Parliament were losing to the Crown
of Great Britain another great empire on the opposite side of
the Atlantic.
"
That, during the period of about a century which has since
elapsed, the Indian possessions of this country
have been
governed and defended from the resources of those possessions,
without the smallest cost to the British Exchequer, which, to
the best of your Petitioners knowledge and belief, cannot be
said of any other of the numerous foreign dependencies of the
Crown."
As this document is for the present buried in the Blue
Books, I give a few of the more striking passages.
The mutiny had just preceded the change of Government.
The Company challenged a full enquiry into that matter ; to
see whether it was in any degree due to a failure in their
arrangements.
"
The Petition then goes on
That, were it even true that these arrangements had failed,
the failure could constitute no reason for divesting the East-
India Company of its functions, and transferring them to Her
Majesty s Government. For, under the existing system, Her
Majesty s Government have the deciding voice. The duty
imposed upon the Court of Directors is to originate measures
and frame drafts of instructions. Even had they been remiss
in this duty, their remissness, however discreditable to them-